Pet Peaves

Pet Peaves… we all have them, and they can be VERY frustrating.

Over the years, I realized what really makes something a “Pet Peave” is MY attitude towards what that person is doing, or not doing. Usually, it is something that causes inconvenience to me. It’s not typically sin on the other person’s part, but my attitude can become sin, so I’ve tried to figure out how to deal with my attitude in this area.

In order to avoid sin on my part, this is my solution: I look at the “flip-side”.

Here’s an illustration I have heard, but has NO pertinence to me.

Example: “Doesn’t my husband know I can’t stand picking up his stinky socks!!!!”

Flip-side: “No, he probably doesn’t even think about it. He’s so burnt out from putting up with the world all day that when he makes it to the bed, he’s not thinking about his socks, stinky or otherwise. He’s so tired he may even barely manage to get them off.

Solution: “In honour, preferring one another….. ” Cut him some slack and just pick them up. Praise the Lord you have a husband, stinky socks and all.

I’m not saying you couldn’t nicely ask him to pick them up himself, but it really isn’t a big deal. It’s just an incovenience to you.

Changing our attitudes towards “Pet Peaves” is critical so as not to have them become sin to us. If they have become sin, then of course that should be privately confessed to the Lord, but why let it go that far.

I hope this will be a help in conquering those “Pet Peaves”.

Oh, I should also point out that I have NOT arrived! I can’t always see the flip-side, and I fall, but I’m trying.

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-13