When You Can’t Do Anything Right
1 Samuel 18:29
“And Saul was yet the more afraid of David; and Saul became David’s enemy continually.”
Have you ever known a person that no matter what you did you couldn’t do anything right for them? David must have felt that way with Saul. The whole situation with David and Saul started when he killed Goliath. After defeating Goliath, the ladies of the city sang that Saul slew his thousands, but David his tens of thousands. That did not set well with Saul. Though David had nothing to do with this song that the ladies sung, that was the incident that turned Saul against him. After that time it didn’t matter what David did; he couldn’t do anything right for Saul. When he played the harp, he didn’t do it well enough. When David skipped a dinner engagement with Saul and his men, it was taken personally. Looking through the whole incident, you can see that David became bewildered because he couldn’t do anything right. Though it was not David’s fault, he had to deal with Saul for quite some time.
Whether or not you deal with a person like this right now, eventually you will have to deal with one. This situation doesn’t have to be of your own making, but it will happen. I know I have had my fair share of situations like this. You can seemingly do everything in your power to try to make things right, but the more you do, the more you seem to frustrate the situation. Let me give you some ideas on how to deal with a situation like this.
First, don’t take it personally. Again, it may not be your fault, so you cannot take it personally. It is very easy to get to the point where you take everything this person does personally. If you do that, then you will only exacerbate the situation. You can’t take it personally because you don’t know what the person is facing. They could be facing serious problems in other areas of their life, and you happen to be the one who takes the blow for their situation. Simply determine not to take what they do personally.
Second, be sure you don’t retaliate. When I look at David, he had every opportunity to end the situation by retaliating, but he allowed God to take care of the situation. When you retaliate, you will only make the situation worse. There will probably be many times when you will have to bite your tongue or hold yourself in check to keep from retaliating, but you won’t regret suppressing any retaliatory actions.
Third, ask God to change the situation. Whenever situations like this happen to me, I always ask God to change the person who needs changing. I have found in most situations that God has to work on me as well as the other person. God allows situations like this in our lives to better us. If you will be open to the idea that you could be in the wrong, then God can change the areas where you contributed to the situation.
Finally, do good for the person. Though the person may not want your help in anything, they can’t stop you from doing good for them. Find something where you can help them. It doesn’t always have to be in the area of giving things to them, it could be in the area of doing something for them behind the scenes. God could use your efforts to turn the situation around.
Whatever you do, don’t give up on trying to turn a relationship like this around. Always do right no matter what they do. When you become frustrated to the point of quitting, then be honest with God and tell Him how you feel. If you will continue to work on repairing this situation, eventually you could benefit from turning a tumultuous relationship into a great relationship.