09/04/2026
The Difference Between Affecting and Infecting
There is an important distinction that deserves attention here. When someone hurts you, it affects you. That is honest and real and nothing to be ashamed of. But when you allow that hurt to go unaddressed, when you let it sit and grow and spread, it stops merely affecting you and begins infecting you. It seeps into your marriage, your friendships, your workplace, your relationship with God. It changes how you see people who have done nothing wrong to you. It makes you suspicious of kindness and allergic to community.
The enemy is not subtle about this strategy. He wants you stuck. Stuck in anger. Stuck in resentment. Stuck in pain. Because a person who is stuck cannot move forward into what God has prepared for them.
But there is a difference between being stuck and being still. Being still is a posture of trust. It is the quiet confidence of someone waiting on God, knowing that something is being worked out even when they cannot see it. Being stuck is something else entirely. It is the suffocating feeling of being trapped by something you were never meant to hold onto. One comes from God. The other comes from the enemy.
