FORGIVENESS IS NOT ENOUGH...

Have you ever had to deal with a difficult person sometime in your life?  Maybe you have gone to school or worked with someone who seems to give you a hard time every step of the way.  Maybe you have encountered this challenging person at your church or in your neighborhood.  There is even a possibility that you may have a family member that is not pleasant or seems to cause conflict whenever a situation does not go their way.  These people tend to thrive on inflicting distress on others and seem unbothered with the fact that people don’t really enjoy their presence.  Wherever there is drama, turmoil or upheaval, you can be sure that there one of these individuals is involved. 

No matter where you work, no matter what school or church you attend or what neighborhood you live in, you will eventually come across one of these challenging people. Most of us have learned by this point in our lives that these difficult individuals are absolutely unavoidable. No matter how hard we wish those people would simply disappear from our lives, we must come to the conclusion that they are NOT ever going away. If the answer to all of our problems does not lie in being able eradicate these people completely from our lives then what is our solution? 

I was utterly shocked the day I figured out that the solution to dealing with these controlling, conflict causing people actually lies within me!!!  Sounds crazy doesn’t it?  Even though I’m not responsible for their rude actions toward me, I will answer to God for HOW I react to them. My job is to forgive those who offend me, BUT is granting them forgiveness really enough?   

If you would have come to me several years ago for advice about how to deal with difficult people, I would have given you all the wrong answers.  Sadly, I would have encouraged you to steer clear of those bullies and mark them off your list for good.  I would have persuaded you to only talk with nice people who would never dream of hurting your feelings.  The problem with my heart at that time is that when someone offended me, I never forgave them for anything ever.  I was always marking people off my list and avoided people who were rude.  I was bitter and did not have the attitude of Christ and His love for the people who really needed love the most.

Over and over I see Christian friends posting long rants on facebook and other forms of media about how they've been wronged or mistreated by a bully at their work, school, in their church or neighborhood.  It saddens me because these friends who've been hurt and are venting their angry feelings with hundreds of people, do NOT truly have the proper Biblical perspective of the stressful and frustrating situation they’ve endured.  For most of my life, I too did not have the proper response and outlook the times when people had offended me then I finally realized that it was God who sovereignly sent that person into my life so that I could learn from them.

What in the world could we possibly learn from dealing with prideful selfish people who cause us trouble?  Why would God allow us to go through such emotional hurt, turmoil and pain at the hands of a selfish bully?  Our God does have great compassion for us and feels our deepest pain. He loves His children more than we can ever fathom, but we must trust Him with every detail of our lives and know that He is our Father who is working out situation we face for our good and His glory.

 Our Father desires most of all that His dear children become more fashioned into the image of His precious Son.  He wants us learn how to love the unlovable like Jesus did when He chose to love us and how to respond to those who mistreat us like Jesus does every time we mistreat Him.  There’s always a bigger picture in every situation we face, and most of the time it’s only God who has the crystal clear view, not us.

I have learned so much about forgiving others in the past several years because I finally came to the point of humility when I realized the DEPTHS of Jesus Christ’s forgiveness for ALL of my nasty sin!  How could I not forgive others who hurt or mistreat me when Jesus forgives me of FAR MORE every single day of my life!   But when I began to realize that my responsibility was not over once I had simply forgiven.   I remember asking God this very question, “Okay God, I have forgiven all of these difficult people, now isn’t that enough?  What more could you possibly want from me?”   

Many of us think that if we forgive those difficult people who have caused us so much trouble, then we’re off the hook and have gone above and beyond what MOST people ever do.  The problem is that forgiveness is NOT enough!  God asks us to go beyond forgiveness.  After forgiving our offender, most of us RARELY proceed to the next step of obedience.  Jesus calls us to go the extra mile and bless and pray for our offenders once we have forgiven them.  Jesus says in Matthew 5:44, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”  When we ask God to bless our offenders with qualities they are missing, we can be freed from the emotional pain that was caused by their hurts and have the privilege of watching how God will work in the situation.

God desires that we pray for those unlovable people because He knows that when we are praying for people, we will develop a genuine love for them. Those people desperately NEED to be shown love and who better to demonstrate the undeserving love of Christ than the one whom they have hurt.  Jesus tells us in John 13:34, “Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”    When our offender hurt us, they were showing that they needed help.  If we desire to see God accomplishing impossible and amazing things through us, we must adapt the attitude of Christ and look for ways to minister to our offender.

We are to forgive, pray, bless and genuinely love the bullies who at times make our lives more difficult.  God will then show us how we can minister to them.  I am telling you from personal experience that this WILL work!  God can use us to help the very person who hurt us.  You may view this difficult individual as someone you want to eliminate completely from your life, but God put them there for you to minister to and through this process, you are becoming more like Christ.

Have you ever hurt or offended someone and they have forgiven you, loved you and prayed for you? This kind of undeserving love has the power to transform any hard hearted difficult person. If the one who has hurt you is not a Christian, how much MORE important would it be to follow Christ’s example to forgive, love, pray for and minister to these people instead of complaining about them publicly.  We must change our perspective to God’s perspective.

Because of the shed blood of Christ, we can forgive our offenders.  Because of the shed blood of Christ we can pray for our offenders.  Because of the shed blood of Christ, we can bless our offenders.  Because of the shed blood of Christ we can genuinely love our offenders.  We are enabled to do all of these seemingly impossible things for others just as Christ forgives us, prays for us, blesses us and loves us with an unconditional everlasting love that we definitely do not deserve.