Pitiful or Powerful?

This changed the way I think, and I hope you will take the time to read it as well. The whole book so far is very good, I recommend it.


Excerpt from Managing Your Emotions by Joyce Meyer.

“If you want to receive emotional healing and go forward with your life, you must lay down self-pity. I am so convinced of that truth that I will go so far as to ask you the same question that God asked me several years ago: “Do you want to be pitiful or powerful?”

I will also pose some other questions for you on this same subject. The first one is: “Do you feel sorry for yourself?”

Be honest in your response. Don’t do as I used to do and answer, “Yes, but…”

God has shown me that self-pity is like a wall that keeps us from going forward in life. In my own life, I had to learn that everyone has problems. Just because I was abused as a child, I am not a special case. Like everyone else, I have to take responsibility for my own healing and restoration-and so do you. We must cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

My next question is: “Do you have a chip on your shoulder?”

For years I walked around with a huge chip on my shoulder because, “what happened to me was not fair; it shouldn’t have happened to a dog, so I deserve…”

It is a little hard on the flesh to have to admit that our special problems do not make us special cases. We are all special to God, but everybody has been hurt or abused in one way or another. Each of us has to take responsibility for our own behavior and avoid blaming the past or those who have hurt us.

The Bible tells us that those who wallow in self-pity make themselves vulnerable to the devil, who is seeking someone to devour.

If we don’t want the devil to devour us, then we need to resist self-pity, blaming others, and carrying a chip on our shoulder. If we do things God’s way, we will experience God’s victory.

That’s the message that the Lord was trying to get across to me when He asked me whether I wanted to be pitiful or powerful. He was saying to me then, just as He is saying to you now, “You may have a reason to feel sorry for yourself, but you have no right to do so, because I am willing to heal your life. I will deliver you from everything Satan has tried to do to you, and I will use it for your good and My glory.”

All the hurts and wounds you have suffered, even the things you have done to wrong yourself, the Lord can make into the tools and equipment you need to minister to other hurting people.”