“For I said, Hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice over me: when my foot stumbles they magnify themselves against me.”
“Yea, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.” We do not normally think of David as having relationship problems, but some of his psalms prove otherwise. The two selections from Psalms gives us two examples of relationship problems. In these two examples David was beset by people who wanted to humble, or shame, him and by a friend who betrayed him in some way. Just read on in the psalms and you will find many passages similar to these. David knew what we should know, i.e., one of our biggest problems in this world is with people. Think about it, how many of your heartbreaking, or heartrending moments have been because of what other people said about you or did to you? If this has never happened to you consider yourself fortunate. (We might also consider the times that we mistreated someone else. Just Saying!) Jesus spent a lot of time trying to help us love and relate to people, because He knew that they would not always be easy to love and would not always be our friends. Paul wrote about relationships with other people, because he knew that they would be the cause of a lot of our problems. This is why it is so important to practice loving people on a daily basis. If we are to ever "love the unlovable" we will have to be filled with God's Spirit of love and really apply it. I'm afraid that in our churches we too often fail the "other people" test. The New Testament tells us only to love them. Let’s take David’s example from Psalm 41:9. There was someone he had trusted who betrayed him in some way. I don’t think that there is anything more disappointing than to be betrayed by someone with whom we have been close. Proverbs 17:17a says that “A friend loveth at all times…” This means that a true friend will not betray that friendship. We can’t do anything about others who are not true friends, but we can be careful ourselves to always be true friends and “love at all times.” What should we do in adverse circumstances like these? First, I would think that the first thing we should do is to pray for the person. Ask God to help your friend, and ask Him to help you continue to love your errant brother or sister. When I have prayed for people with whom I have had personal problems, I have found that I can’t dislike them. God knows what the situation is and He will answer our prayers. The second thing that we should do is to fight against the temptation for pay the person back. The Bible always tells us that vengeance belongs to God. It is difficult for us to not want to avenge ourselves when we feel that we have been offended in some way. But if we will look at Jesus, and how He reacted to such situations, we will see that we cannot really avenge ourselves. All that happens is that the strife continues on and on. Romans 12:17 tells us: “Recompense to no man evil for evil.” Evil can never stamp out evil; therefore, we do not return the evil done to us. The third thing that we should do is to seek to reconcile with the person. I know that this is difficult, and it should not be done until we have prayed about the situation and have forgiven the person in our hearts. We want reconciliation to be sincere. In order for this to be the reality, we will have to forgive. You might be thinking: “Bro. Joe, you have lost your mind. I want to insist that they apologize." That would be good, but I don’t remember that anyone who crucified Jesus apologized to Him before He forgave them. If the other person will not reconcile with us, we should simply wish them well and move on with our lives. Life is too short to hold grudges against people. We will always have to deal with people in one way or the other. Let’s just make sure that we deal with them in a Christlike manner. . Bro. Joe
1 Comment
Margaret M Jones
2/3/2016 09:56:34 am
Have been out of town for a few days. Thanks for this message, always a challenge, something we cannot do on our own.
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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