Truth is, you are His favorite child.
Say this out loud to yourself- it's true. What feelings come up for you as you speak this statement? Most likely, you have conflicting emotions.
And so He wants you to see the depth of your enemy’s failure so that you can grasp the true depth of His abundant forgiveness and love for you.
Say this out loud to yourself- it's true. What feelings come up for you as you speak this statement? Most likely, you have conflicting emotions.
And so He wants you to see the depth of your enemy’s failure so that you can grasp the true depth of His abundant forgiveness and love for you.
Recognizing the ambivalence in the soul caused by betrayal is a great place to start.
Ambivalence is the experience of two conflicting feelings at the same time; disgust and desire, love and hate, invitation and rejection. When you think about the broken relationship(s) in your life, you may experience ambivalence. I know I do- as much as I desire reconciliation, I equally desire full and public restitution for all my suffering.
It's selfish. It's human. It's honest. It hurts.
Let's dive into this very human experience of ambivalence together, shall we?
Think now of that one person who is impossible for you to love. Perhaps they are in your church, among
your extended circle of friends, or even in your family. They stand tall among their peers, they hurt you, and they cannot be safely approached for
discussion- you are helpless to change their opinion of things and it is
hopeless to think of the restoration of your relationship with him or her. This feeling of resentment you
hold against them is as solid and fixed as a very large rock weighing you down.
Down. Down.
Generally speaking we are incapable of seeing the true
brokenness within ourselves. We are quick to extend grace to our own
person, forgiving our daily mistakes, but hesitant to extend this empathy and compassion to others. So Jesus can use the pain of an impossible betrayal to
deliver a gift- motivation to seek a change of your own inner person. Our own
failures are easier to overlook than the failures of our enemies, so God does
His most powerful work here, in the places where we nurse our offense towards His
favorite children.
Think again of that one person you cannot love. Because all of
us have people that we Do. Not. Like.
Maybe we admit it, or maybe we avoid it. But to be human is
to have enemies.
Jesus had numerous enemies, and He was God. So who are we, flawed
humans, to think we can avoid this reality? Enemies are inevitable.
It is not a question of whether you will have enemies, it is a question of
whether you will love them.
So here it is: you have the privilege to be called the
favorite child of God. AND your enemy is
entitled to this privilege as well.
Not fair? Not in human terms. Love is the Kingdom currency.
So you can both stand side by side in this same privilege of
ridiculous love because scarcity does
not exist in Kingdom economy. There is no limit of Gods’ favoritism for His children. Just
because I am His beloved does not mean another is not, or that others are less
so.
But we don’t want to share the benefits of belovedness if there are people we decide do not deserve it. So we judge harshly and often- the scarcity mindset says that love is limited and should not be extended to just anyone.
This week God spoke this statement to me, “I am going to reveal to you the depth of your betrayer's failure so that you can grasp the reality of My
forgiveness.”
Resistance sets in. We argue with Jesus. We want to reserve
the right to judge the ways in which others have wronged us. It’s
based on experience and repeat offense, and we are smart and observant. We will
not be duped again. They deserve to be loved less than us. We are not stupid. Their sin is much more damaging than ours.
Damaging to whom?
We are so foolish.
Oh no, we say to God, “that person” does not deserve to be as
beloved as I am. Look at what they have done! They fall shorter than I do, just
look at how they have messed up. Look at their life, it’s obvious how wrong
they are!
It’s a soul-distorting comparison game. Because you are
messy too. Your sin damages also. Is there a limit of acceptable sin? Where does Grace fit into this equation??
Yet we choose to avoid our own failure and focus on that of
our enemy, and we withhold the love of God from those we decide are no longer our neighbors.
After all, even the Jews agreed that you love only those who
are close to you:
Leviticus
19:18 (NLT)
18 “Do not
seek revenge or bear a grudge against a
fellow Israelite, but love your
neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
We like to love our neighbors, the people who live close to
us but probably know little about us, those who see our best and never cross
our bad side. The people nearby who we only have to speak with when we feel
like coming outside.
The people we can quietly retreat from when we fall short,
maintaining our good standing with them because we only see them when our best
foot is forward.
We see our neighbors only on Sundays, or only when we gather
for an occasional coffee or dessert, perhaps just in passing to get the mail.
These people are easy to love.
Our neighbors are the people who do not mirror our sins but
reflect only our goodness. Yes, it is easy to love only those who do not see our
capacity for shortcoming, the truth of our mistakes.
So this makes Jesus offensive when he declares the new Kingdom
currency which extends out beyond our neighborhood- love.
43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love
your neighbor’[a] and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies![b] Pray for those who
persecute you! 45 In that
way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.
For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on
the just and the unjust alike.” Matthew
5:43-45 (NLT)
Why did Jesus say “You have heard the law that says ‘hate your enemies’”? What is Jesus
talking about here? It does not say “hate your enemies” in the Jewish law. His
listeners had not heard the law say that. The law only said “love your
neighbors and fellow community”. So where is Jesus extrapolating the word hate from this command?
Did He misquote the law or forget what had been written
before He came?
I hardly think so. It’s Jesus.
Oh, well then, perhaps in typical Jesus fashion he was talking
about the hearts of his listeners,
who heard “love your neighbor” and deciphered permission to “hate those who
are not”.
If there is an inner circle, this implies there are people
on the outside. If there are neighbors, there are therefore outsiders. Who is
marginalized from your heart? Who have you cast away from your community, no
matter how justified you may have been in doing so? These, these are the enemies. This is where “that person”
you are thinking of resides, in the shadows on the outside of love.
Jesus said “hate” because he knew that some of his listeners
had heard it said “don’t bear a grudge against your fellow community members”
and assumed a condensation of meaning that allowed them to hate those who were
deemed “outside” of their social circle.
Some people may not be safe for you, and they may need to stay
outside of your neighborhood. I understand that completely.
But they are still loved by God. So what to do with them?
Jesus says to love. So we killed Him.
Now to be fair, He did not say “allow enemies into your neighborhood” or “invite
them back into your intimate circle”. This may come with time, or it may never come at all. You
may be willing to reconcile, but the other party may be unwilling. You may change, and the other person may remain unsafe. The distance between you could possibly be permanent.
This is not a problem for love- such reunion
is not required, because the love Jesus talks about is a mindset and
not a moment.
Jesus said a much harder thing than “reconcile” or "close the gap"- He said we
must endow upon the enemy the rights and privileges given to a favorite child of
God, even if they remain outside of
your circle of safe people.
You can extend the
fruits of the Spirit to someone who is not allowed in your neighborhood- they
do not need to enter your inner circle of companionship to receive the Grace
which flows through you from your Father.
Because the fruits of Grace do not depend on proximity to be
given or received- they only require submission to the empowering teachings
of Jesus.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer within
the circle of Kingdom belovedness.
I don’t know how to do this well at all.
When it comes to reconciliation and forgiveness, I am a
terrible student. At best, I am beginning to pick up bits and pieces of Jesus
teaching and only just starting to fit them into something tangible. Most days I fail- occasionally I succeed. It’s a long and arduous
process, mostly just because I make it so through my stubborn resistance to His
teachings and my repeated persistence in living on my own broken terms.
After all, it’s convenient to have enemies- it makes this life easier.
But it makes spiritual transformation much harder.
I did learn one thing this week that I want to share here with my readers: my enemies are beloved favorite children of
my Redeemer. Not for how they hurt me, or for how they hurt themselves and others, but
because they bear His image and my Father longs to lavish His
love upon them just as He is already doing for me.
Think of that one
person you cannot love well. Because all of us have people that we Do. Not.
Like. Choose to see them as a favorite child of God, not merely tolerated
by Jesus but fully loved by Him. Just as you are. Even in your stubborn clinging to your old ways of living,
He calls you beloved.
And nobody wants
to love their enemies on an actual, practical level, which is why the Messenger was
killed.
It is a daily discipline to love your enemies, because the
entire body and brain rebels against it until we take captive the thoughts
which hold us hostage to hate. This takes a lifetime to accomplish.
So when you are on the other side of this life, when the
Kingdom comes, your race is won, then what is the one thing you look forward to
having the most? For me, it’s this: Reunion and reconciliation with the
people I call my enemy.
I look forward to shalom with those who have wounded my
heart. I long to love and be loved by the people who can no longer
live in my neighborhood because of deep wounds and betrayal.
In heaven I want a long and genuine hug of deep affection from those whom Jesus will call my
enemies- those unsafe brothers and sisters in His family.
When Jesus says “love your enemies”, who specifically comes to mind for
you? That is exactly where Jesus wants to begin His work in you.
He wants to unite broken relationships among all His
favorite children. Not to force our hand, but to break down the walls which
boundary our hearts from fulfilling relationships. Enemies do that to us- influence
us to boundary up our heart so that we can withhold our love. Not because of
who they are, but because of who we become as a result of our reaction to their
own brokenness.
Truly, I look forward to having deep, rewarding and
meaningful fellowship with the people in my life who have inspired me to build up
walls. Some relationships may not be fully repairable in this
lifetime, but we can still affirm the beloved inheritance that God is offering
to them.
We can watch the value of our enemies rise up, up up as we
open ourselves to the power of increasing Grace.
And you are making progress if you experience ambivalence
towards your enemies as we attempt to love them.
Because enemies are people who cause deep ambivalence within
the soul- a longing to both forgive and to punish at the same time.
And I read recently that it is a sign of maturity to become aware
and accepting of the reality that there
are fellow children of God who bring out ambivalence in me, both
because of how they choose to live their lives and because of how I choose to
live mine. A collision of interests, because neither party has in mind the
interests of God.
If you feel ambivalent towards your enemies, you are making
significant progress. This means that love is beginning to shine through the
cracks in your high walls. Not so that your enemies can get in, but so that you
can climb out.
Should some relationships require distance indefinitely for
very valid reasons, that painful reality does not exempt those people from
falling under the “enemy” category which Jesus talks about. That person who will never be safe for you indicates a place in your soul where God wants to
begin His healing process. Irreconcilable differences can only be healed when
favoritism is set apart from scarcity.This is a Kingdom economy with a currency of unconditional
love.
And a nuance here: I don’t mean to become doormats, letting
unsafe people trample upon your heart. I mean to become empowered to recognize
an enemy as a favorite child of God with all due rights and privileges. You do
not need to get close to “that person” to picture them standing alongside you
under the light of forgiveness and grace which covers you both in a blanket of
redemption. This is the seed for Kingdom victory in your soul.
Could you stand hand in hand with that person in front of
the cross and receive forgiveness together?
For the rain falls both on the wounded and the wounder, the
one who causes pain and the one who receives it- Jesus recognizes this
contradiction and He is working to correct it. Not by withholding the rain, but
by extending the dramatic effects of His transforming grace.
This week God clearly said to me, “I need you to see the
depth of this person’s personal failure so that you can grasp the deeper truth
of my forgiveness.”
I didn’t like that, but it gave meaning to an area of
frustration in my life, a place where I have been working to invite Jesus to
heal and repair- an ongoing process that means picking up my cross daily and
following Him, even when I really Do. Not. Want. To.
This process of picking up our cross and following Him is
redundant. It is meant to be so, because we are a stubborn and forgetful
people. So we need that one person who’s betrayal reveals the extent
of human failure, because that one person reveals the extent of God’s love.
He loves your enemy JUST AS MUCH as He loves you. What does
this mean for your relationships?
The problem with accepting that you are God’s favorite child
is that the scarcity mindset says that if I am His favorite, others are not. The Kingdom reality is that we are each His favorite.
We need to see each other’s failures because it is a mirror
image of our own. It helps us see ourselves more clearly. And God knows we need help to see inside our own hearts, so He
strategically placed certain people in our lives to gently but persistently mirror
our own brokenness and bring out the worst in us so we realize our desperate
need for Grace.
You were His favorite child before you accomplished a single
thing- He loves you just as much today
as He did the first day you were conceived. Nothing can change that- nothing can knock you out of His favoritism.
Even that one person whom you cannot love- nobody can take away your favored
status except yourself, by refusing to live in it.
When we see the sin of our betrayers, we feel anger. When we see that same sin within ourselves, we feel shame,
because that same judgement we cast out has now been cast back on us. So Jesus steps in to break the cycle of unforgiveness which
we are helpless to stop.
When shame loses it’s power in the light of our favored
status as a child of God, our sin does not go away. In fact, in comes into sharper
contrast against the divine and holy love of our King. But instead of hiding
our failures from Him, we can begin to present them honestly and openly, again
and again, because we trust He will not turn away or punish us.
Take up your cross again. And again. And again.
When we think of that one person whom we cannot fully
forgive today, we must begin to also think of that one place inside our
self which we cannot fully invite Jesus into, for that is what that one person
mirrors within us. That is the first place He wants to transform.
So love your hurting brothers and sisters, because it is good for your soul. Love them from a safe distance or love them up close. But love them either way.
So as you go about your week, think of the ways in which God
is using the sinners around you to wake you up to the depth of His redeeming love. Instead of carrying around the weight of that one person’s
terrible wrong (and it is terrible, I am sure), take on the lighter burden of appreciating how good God is to
love ALL His children in the midst of such rampant brokenness. He wants you to see the extent
of human betrayal so that you can grasp the truth of His forgiveness.
When you think of that one person, think also of the promise
that you are His favorite, too, and there
is no scarcity of forgiveness in the family of God.
You are His favorite child, so you can afford to love your
enemy today.
Do not annihilate your enemy, but incorporate them into the Kingdom reality.
Practice loving your enemies because this is the art of soul care.
Here to close is my prayer for this week, as I look ahead at the
challenges I face:
“Father, You say to Your children to come as you are- so I come as I am. A bit restless, longing for more, desiring attention and validation from Your Spirit, wanting to stay asleep but compelled to wake up by the people around me, expecting the worst but wanting the best, full of sin but open to grace. Jesus, I invite you into the mess that is my frail human soul and I hope that You will wake it up today to the glories of Your provision and blessing. I know I fall so hopelessly short of the human ideal that You established during Your ministry here on Earth. I also know that You are my loving Father who draws near to me even in my sin and shortcoming. I see my imperfections and so do You- together let’s continue my spiritual transformation one small step at a time today. Walk with me, Jesus, and teach me Your way, the only way to live.”
Join me, brothers and sisters, as we learn how to love the
children of God that we do not like.
With all my imperfect love,
Rebecca
~*~
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