The Refining Part 4
"Walking in the Spirit"
Part D
by Ricci Johnson-Wilson
Learning to love...
I know there are a lot of people out there that are hard to love. Perhaps they are contentious, unruly, abrasive, or just plain mean. It can be hard to love difficult individuals, but if you have started your day with the Lord, tuning your spirit to His, what is going to come out of you is what would come out of Jesus, and what came out of Jesus? Love your enemies and bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, honorably so there is no room for blame. The Lord is telling us that no matter what this individual is heaping upon us, we are not to retaliate.
What about when it’s family? Often, it’s much harder, when we are related, to refrain from reactionary responses, especially when it is our children. We love and adore them, but as they get older, let’s just say, there is nothing like a child to keep us wrestling between the flesh and the Spirit! When they hit late teens and head into college and the world is really working to penetrate their minds, it feels as though you wrestle all day long to remain in the Spirit.
Many of us can relate, when our child returns for their first holiday after a semester in college, we may think, “What happened to my kid? This is not the child I raised!” And we go through a period of a time where our heart starts to break, and we weep. We love this person we gave birth to, but this animosity that is developing—what is up with that? But see, you have the love of a parent because you did give birth to them, you did raise them, and you want to see them overcome so you are willing to press through the animosity that comes at you because it is your child. You love them through it, you learn to listen to them, give your opinion, agree to disagree, whatever the situation may be. You just press through because that is your child.
What about when it is your enemy, what about when it is someone with no family relation? What if it is your neighbor? And the moment you moved in, they set themselves like flint against you? Something rubbed them wrong about you and now here you are with someone who has just decided not to like you. What do you do? How do you behave? How do you show them the love of Christ? Or do you just pull into your driveway, find a way to pull all the way into your garage and enter your house so you do not have to make eye contact with them? Is that what you do? Is that what God is calling you to do? Or does our life become a living sacrifice, willing to set aside ourselves because we do not want that person to go to hell, no matter how mean or harsh they are?
One way to find out how the Lord would have you behave with that person is to stay constant in prayer. If you we remain prayerful (and this is something the Lord really had to teach me), it helps keep us from getting hurt so deeply. It helps us not build up unforgiveness. When we stay in prayer, we stay open to the Spirit of God and He will give us compassion for that individual. He can show us something almost tangible that we can grab onto and begin to show kindness to those who persecute us and are so hard on us. Kindness, so there is no reason for blame, no cause for blame, no opportunity for blame or animosity to build up. More importantly, when we show kindness to those that are so harsh, so embittered against you, over time we can soften their heart. Over time we can develop an opportunity to minister to them.
When I moved into my neighborhood almost 20 years ago, the neighbor next to me came and brought me and the kids a platter of cookies. Instantly I loved her! She was an older woman who has since moved, but she was a very good neighbor. She kept to herself, she was kind and the kids thought she was just the greatest things because she brought a platter of cookies our first week. She was just easy to love, easy to serve and the kids would regularly try to serve her. It was easy to love her.
The house on the other side of me was a completely different situation. It became a rental not long after I moved in and it remained a rental for quite some time, so we had a cycle of neighbors until the house moved into foreclosure. After the house was vacant for some time, a real estate agent found some people and brought them to the house and they became squatters. There was a program in place wherein those attempting to sell the house could get a grant to help remove unruly tenants if they lived in the home for six or more months. It was a very sad situation.
This family had several children, none of which were in school. The adults screamed and got into physical altercations throughout the night and the children were outside left unattended all day. They were running drugs through the house day and night. For those of us in the immediate range, it fluctuated between frightening and frustrating.
I was kind to their children. I tried to give them clothes and shoes because their children were younger than mine. In fact, I had tremendous compassion for the children because I saw the life they were in and I grieved for them every day. But the real struggle came with the parents. It was difficult, and there were so many people living in the house, but no matter how hard it made my personal life, it was no excuse for me not to press through and find a way to reach into their lives and demonstrate compassion and love to this family.
I will never forget the day they moved out. It was a day filled with regret, rage and repentance.
The real estate agent came and brought them a $5,000 check. He parked his truck in front of my home and I witnessed the handoff. As he gave them the check, the whole family cheered, handed him the keys and walked down to the bus station with everything they owned in their arms. Regret sunk in as they walked away; I knew I’d missed my chance.
That was more than a decade ago when we had a lot of foreclosures in the area. I was in a different place then, but I often say to myself, “Lord, why didn’t I find a way to reach into their lives and share the Gospel with them? Even if they would not have heard, even if they would not have listened, it was still an opportunity that I missed. Why did I not humble myself and reach into what we all saw as an enemy of the neighborhood, and find a way to touch their lives?” I really had to repent.
Then, when I met the realtor I had to repent again! He had parked his truck in front of my house so I was there as he handed them a check and shouted out “half for you and half for me.” As they walked down to the bus stop, something boiled up inside of me. I was furious and I went out and confronted him. “You used this family, uprooted them from wherever they once were, you subjected all of us in this neighborhood to drugs, shady characters and who knows what else for 6 months, for what? So, you could make a few bucks? How could you use this family like this? They are not connected to anyone; no one is here to pick them up, and you wouldn’t even put them in your truck and take them somewhere. Where are they going to go next?” He was putting them in another house.
I blamed him more for their situation than I did them! There was corruption in him. It was all about the money and I saw him misusing and abusing people in a way that just grieved my heart. So when I found out that he not only was the reason the family was living there, but that he was doing nothing to help them. Instead, he was feeding their habits and moving them to yet another house, keeping their kids in a constant state of being uprooted. And there it was, the rage.
I looked down the street as they climbed on the bus and my heart just broke. I thought, “Lord! Why did I not find out about these people? Why did I concern myself with my own discomfort rather than their souls? Why didn’t I allow Your Spirit to have a greater voice than my flesh?” I had to repent, and repent, and repent some more. If I had known the end from the beginning, I would have treated them completely different. My heart just breaks even now as I think about it, because I wonder, Could my demonstrating the life and love of Christ have made a difference for them and the lives of their children? I will never know. They may not have even been in a place to hear, but the seed would have been planted and somebody would have watered it down the road. I have to live with that even today. Regret. Rage. Repentance. I have looped through these many times over.
We will never know who we are going to encounter or even understand the impact we are supposed to have on peoples’ lives until we reach heaven. However, if we remember that we are called to walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh, our deposit into their lives will be one of significance to their future. If we stay in tune with the Spirit and seek His will in our daily lives, we can move and function in the Spirit instead of the flesh. Doing so makes treating our so-called enemies with love much easier because we come to realize that it’s really not about us, is it? It’s about the Spirit of God flowing in and through us in all that we do. We may just be the only one planted in their lives who will show them the path to eternal life in Christ. Often, this example comes through serving them.
To be continued next week…
Blessings & Love,
Ricci Wilson
