How to respond when you’ve been misunderstood

If you’re a dedicated believer, then at some point in your life you will experience being misunderstood.

You’ll make a decision, knowing it’s 100% God’s leading, and someone (or possibly multiple people) will doubt your character. Maybe they’ll assume you’re in sin, wrongly accuse you, or altogether abandon you.

Honestly, this is really interesting to me. For someone to assume they know what’s best for your life when they don’t know the full story say’s a lot more about their heart than it does about yours. Even if someone actually knew the majority of your story, how arrogant to assume they know what’s best for your life. Has this happened to you? Or have you ever been the one to believe you knew what was best for someone else?

Let’s talk about when you’ve been wrongly accused.

The root issue when you want to defend yourself or seek revenge is your identity.

Think of this: When Jesus was wrongly accused by the people and sent to die on a cross by Pontius Pilate, he never once fought back. He didn’t defend himself when he was incriminated against. In all reality, all the character traits people assigned to him were actually the exact opposite.

Seriously, put yourself in that position for a moment. If you willingly knew you were walking forward to experience the most brutal and intense pain of your life just to save someone else’s life - that'd be difficult in and of itself. Now imagine doing that for the people that are mocking you, wrongly accusing you, and belittling you to your face. Yikes.

As Jesus had insult after insult hurled his way, what did he do? He spoke the truth, but he was never defensive. Why? Because he knew who he was. And he knew who God the Father was. He was so confident and comfortable with being the Son of God that He didn’t feel a need to prove himself to anyone.

Jesus also willingly allowed the circumstances to come his way because knowing God was the Father meant he knew there was a purpose in his pain. He didn’t have to understand why it was happening, what the end results were going to be. Why? Because all He needed to know was the Father’s character.

So what do you do when you’re wrongly accused by someone? Especially when that person is a believer?

You pursue God for who He is. The more you get to know his real character, the more you’ll find your own identity.

Don’t read God’s word trying to make yourself feel better. Read it for what it actually is - a book about God.

Despite what our culture says, we don’t need to go on a trip to Europe to “find ourselves.” Your identity is already a part of who you are. It’s been established since the beginning of time. All we have to do is take hold of and believe what’s already true about us.

And what I’ve found to be true is when we’re able to do that for ourselves, it allows us to act a lot more like Jesus when we’re wrongly accused. Not to mention, it also allows us to forgive those who’ve wrongly accused us.

I know I’m loved, chosen, and delighted in by the God of the universe. You know who else that is true of? All the people who’ve wrongly accused me. We get to experience grace in a whole new way when we know grace was made just as much for them as it was for us.