"I am so Sensitive"

“I am so sensitive; it hurts my feelings so much”, mourns some poor soul on hearing of some remark made by a neighbor, or friend, not realizing that the cause of sensitiveness is selfishness or pride.  Here is a good rule, which will ever prove a help to the one who is ‘talked against’.  If what is said is true, let him reform.  He doubles his sin who sins under reproof.  If it is not true, he should so live that no one will believe it, at the same time pitying the person who did the wrong.  Let such a one always remember that others can only injure our reputation; our personal sin alone can injure our character.

If the sensitive individual did not think so much of self, he would care very much less of what folks said.  He certainly would have no time for sensitiveness.  If he would give himself to his own faithful legitimate work, he would find in it no time to ponder on the misdeeds of others toward him.  Legitimate work, if done aright, is work for God.  Let the sensitive give himself to his own work and thus forget self.  Let him get a view of his own sins, of his own defects, of God’s rich mercy, wisdom, and power.  Let him believe for himself that God will do just right whether man does or not; and in believing and doing thus, sensitiveness will depart and strength will come.  What does it matter what men may say against us if we are doing God’s will?  “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

That man who will triumph with Christ in these last days of peril, will be he who ignores all feelings of apathy and indifference and seeks God by living faith because he needs God.  Thousands will wait for some special feeling, some wave of enthusiasm, some great manifestation of power, no one of which will ever come to them, or it will be unperceived if it does come; and thus waiting they will be swept away by the flood of sin and infidelity.  Faith is not feeling.  Faith is ours to exercise, but feeling is God’s to give.  Faith will believe God whether feeling is present or not.