05.06.03 The 1st Practice for Responding to Negative Gossip About You : Get God Involved

Get God Involved

Frankly speaking, it is important to realise and accept that someone somewhere will inevitably gossip against you one day, whether you like it or not; hence the need to always get God involved before things spin out of ‘human control’.

After the ‘trusted’ source broke the defamatory rumour about us, one of the key things my husband and I did was to escalate the issue to God and continued to involve Him throughout the entire period until the truth eventually surfaced.

When you look at Nehemiah's narrative, you will discover that he, also, kept God involved from the very beginning and throughout the wall-rebuilding project. Scriptures disclose how he kept crying and appealing to God at a noticeably high frequency. See one of his prayers from Nehemiah 6:9 (NKJV) which says: ⁹For they all were trying to make us afraid, saying, “Their hands will be weakened in the work, and it will not be done.” Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands. Then there is a harsh prayer in Nehemiah 6:14 which reads (CEV): ¹⁴Then I asked God to punish Tobiah and Sanballat for what they had done. I prayed that God would punish the prophet Noadiah and the other prophets who, together with her, had tried to frighten me.

Reading the JuaLink story, you will discover, however, that after being targetted by Lulu's negative gossip, Faraja did not make a concerted effort to involve God early enough,. Had she done so, maybe things would not have spiraled to the level of her resignation from the organisation, though of course, one could argue that the gossip created a window for her to get a much better job as CEO of Bidacom Africa.

So, when people gossip against you, prayer is key. Through the power of prayer, God will shield you from the impact of vicious rumours as Job found out. We learn that from Job 5:21 which says (NET): ²¹You will be protected from malicious gossip, and will not be afraid of the destruction when it comes... In addition, God will direct your footsteps such that if a decision has to be made, it will be aligned with God’s will for you.

Therefore, if you are working in a gossip-infested entity, organisation, department, unit or team, you should not wait for the situation to go haywire before getting God involved. In other words, make ‘spiritual’ gossip-control’ a ‘standing item’ on your prayer agenda.