oppression

Do you ever feel like you’ve been unjustly treated? Perhaps, you’ve been a victim of other people’s poor choices or circumstances that you had little or no control over. Life sometimes seems very unfair.

As leaders, we’re particularly prone to experiencing unfair treatment. Someone gets the credit for work you did. A group covertly lobbies for your ouster from a project or even your position. You work really hard on something only to have your team move in a different direction. Personal slights, undermining, end runs where someone goes around you to get what they want, both subtle and overt character assassinations, lack of respect, mutinies, insubordination, and the nasty list of injustices goes on.   

In previous blogs, we saw the importance of worshipping God as sovereign, loving, wise, and good. When we worship God as sovereign in the midst of injustice, we acknowledge that He is still on His throne, working out His ultimate plans despite people’s best attempts to thwart them. When we revere God as a God who loves, we can find our comfort and solace in His loving arms. We can allow His love to transform our hearts and the way we view the perpetrators of the injustice. When we worship God as wise, we can imagine with hope that God’s wise ways transcend the immediate. His wisdom has an eternal outlook. God is also good. He can bring good even out of the bad stuff. Our God is a redeeming God – One who delights in taking what people intend for evil and turning it into something good, as we see in the story of Joseph in Genesis.

Deeply adoring God in these ways helps us to face injustice in a helpful, God-honoring way. Yet, we also know from Scripture that God is just. Isaiah 30:18-19 says, “Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you.”