We close out a full week with a really good question from a podcast listener named Matt. "Hello Pastor John, how have you dealt with receiving feedback and criticism from people you don't really respect, even if what they're saying has some truthfulness in it?" Or another way of asking it is this, "How have you dealt with receiving feedback and criticism from people who are just simply not good at giving feedback in a loving and encouraging way?" What would you say?

Good question. No criticism is pleasant to receive, and all of us have a great spiritual work to do in our hearts, in humbling ourselves under God's mighty hand, as Peter says in chapter 5 of his first letter, and as Philippians 2 says, counting others more significant than ourselves and taking thought for the interests of others, not just our own, and emptying ourselves the way Christ emptied himself to become a servant.

So we need to overcome our pride that makes it so difficult to be corrected. Ooh, how we hate to be corrected. It is emotionally, it just feels so bad, and yet it's so good for us sometimes. If we don't overcome that pride, we will lose our usefulness in God's service, we'll never grow beyond the mistakes we make, and we might even make shipwreck of our faith.

But if I understand Matt's question correctly, and I could be wrong here, is that he's not just asking how we can be humble enough to receive criticism and profit from it, he's asking about that particular relationship where the criticism is delivered in a way that is not encouraging or hopeful or loving, as far as he can tell.

And my guess is, it's just a guess, that he is asking this about a relationship with someone who is close to him, because the criticism that comes to us from a distance, say through social media, isn't usually as painful as the criticism that comes from a family member or a friend or a colleague at work or church.

And I think I understand the situation, because I know there are people who seem incapable of joyful, spontaneous affirmation, but are spring-loaded to give spontaneous correction. It's just their personality. They would have to work at saying anything positive, and the most natural thing in the world is to say something negative.

The first thing I would say is that in a good long-term closer relationship, it would be fitting at some point to approach the other person and tell him or her how you perceive that and how you experience that correction or criticism. And of course, that's a very delicate thing, and it runs the risk of making the relationship harder instead of better, although it could make the relationship way better if God intervenes.

And of course, when you do that, when you approach someone, you follow Jesus' counsel to take the log out of your eye so that you can see clearly, to take the speck out of your brother's eye. In other words, he should feel, that person you're going to should feel that you are coming to him in a spirit of humility, with a clear sense of your own inadequacies and failures and the ways you may have hurt him or the way you even do now annoy him.

And you keep in mind Galatians 6, 1, "Brothers, if anyone is caught in transgression, you who are spiritual, restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch over yourself, lest you too be tempted." And you tell him that you think your relationship would be better if he mingled more affirmation with his corrections, and if you spoke more gently, perhaps, whatever it is, you explain to him about his words that are off-putting to you or hurtful to you.

And then, with hope, you leave it, and you go on your way doing your business, modeling for him as much affirmation as you can without being flattering or manipulative. And if no change comes about, and my guess is that's where he is, it's where many of us are, in fact, everybody probably in some relationship, if no change comes about, then we have our work cut out for us.

In the New Testament, it is replete with instructions about how Christians should respond to those who mistreat them, whether it's huge mistreatment like persecution or death, or whether it's tiny little mistreatment like excessive criticism or insensitive and repeated correction. So here are four simple brief pointers that I have found helpful, even though I don't think I've arrived in my own ability to handle these things the way I would like, but here's how I'm working at it.

Number one, remember that there are words for the wind. Job says in Job 626, "Do you think that you can reprove words when the speech of a despairing man is wind?" In other words, always be alert that there are probably elements of brokenness and pain in a person's life that may cause them to have broken patterns of communication with others, so that the brokenness, which feels damaging and offensive to us, is more about their own woundedness than about your deficiencies.

Keep that possibility in mind. That was certainly the case with Job as he spoke words that they then jumped on, and he said, "Look, don't you realize that a despairing man sometimes says things that he wished he hadn't said?" Number two, remember that Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13 as longsuffering.

Love suffers long, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. So there's longsuffering, there's bearing all things, there's enduring all things. So just when you think you have borne this criticism, as long as you can, as long as you can, the Holy Spirit will enable you to bear the fruit of patience and endure it another day, and then another day, and then another day, because we're called to be longsuffering.

Third, when Peter gave Jesus as an example of how he did not revile when reviled, or we could say did not criticize when criticized, Peter said he did not threaten but continued entrusting himself to the one who judges justly, that is, to God. In other words, God is the final judge about whether you are being mistreated, and he will settle the matter perfectly.

You may feel sometimes a righteous indignation, but Peter is telling us you don't need to act on that. You can keep turning, returning good for evil, and leave the matter to God. And finally, in order to keep your bearings in a relationship that seems unduly critical, you need a fellowship of godly people around you who give you both godly affirmation for the evidences of God's grace in your life and loving criticism.

Proverbs 11:14 says, "In the abundance of counselors there is safety." And one of the implications of that, I think, is that the plurality of godly people in your life tend to give you a more realistic echo of your virtues and your faults than if you only have one person responding to you.

And that'll help you, I think, it sure helps me, to maintain our emotional stability in the face of a few people in your life who are unduly critical. And I would just end this by giving thanks for people that God has surrounded me with over the years who have been able to give balanced biblical assessment of my strengths and weaknesses, my virtues and my sins, the things that I do that are helpful to others, and the habits I have that are not helpful to others.

So I would just encourage everybody, find such a fellowship of friends. Yes, thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for modeling this accountability for us all. Well for more information about the podcast or to find our most recent or our most popular episodes, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper. Have a great weekend and we will return on Monday. 1 Desiring God's Preciousness for the Eternal Life of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints