Hurting Others

(Lessons
from Potiphar's Wife)

Sin
hurts others. What Potiphar's wife did hurt Joseph. He suffered
because of her sin.

That's
the way life is. Our actions don't just affect us. It can affect
everyone we know.

Sin
never cares about the other person.

Sin
is like a bullet that kills or injures, a knife that stabs and a fire
that burns. It hurts!

I'm
sure none of us would deliberately hurt anyone with these things, yet
we hurt people far more with our mouth and with our actions.

Our
words can hurt—criticizing, lying, gossiping, badmouthing etc.

Our
actions can hurt—the silent treatment, snobbing, ignoring,
disrespect etc.

I
read a quote a while back which went something like this.

Christians
would never purposely run someone down with their car, and yet they
run people down with their mouths.

In
the book of Proverbs, this verse is repeated twice.

The
words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the
innermost parts of the belly.
(Proverbs 18:8 and 26:22)

Another
Proverbs says
A
man that beareth false witness against his neighbour is a maul, and a
sword, and a sharp arrow. (Pro
25:18)

I
never understood what this verse meant until I read it paraphrased
like this “Telling lies about someone is as
harmful as hitting him with an axe, or wounding him with a sword, or
shooting him with a sharp arrow.” Wow! That's pretty
serious.

As
teenagers and adults, we usually care about people's bodies—we
wouldn't hurt them physically—yet we often don't care about their
feelings or their reputation.

If
you disobey and disrespect your parents, you hurt them deeply.
Teenagers who go off their own way have no idea how their sin hurts
everyone they know—parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents,
nieces, nephews, friends, people at church, and the list goes on.

Do you
realize how much your words, actions, decisions and attitudes affect others?