Everyone seems to have a few of “those people” in their lives. You know the ones I mean. They’re the paranoid person who constantly complains about all of the plots people are hatching against them, the OCD person who has to carefully script every conversation, the one who is always asking for your help but never offering theirs even when they can clearly see you need it… It seems they have only one things in common; they can rub you raw… and if they’re Christians, they can REALLY rub you raw.
The Word of God says, in Proverbs 27:17, that “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” When I said they rub you raw? There is a reason. God often puts people like this in our lives for this very purpose, to teach us what it is to truly love as He loves.
It is easy to love those who treat us well, who love us the way we expect to be loved or at least behave the way we expect them to act. That type of love is good, but if we aspire to love like Jesus loved, we must go further – a lot further. One step along that path is to learn to love “those people” – to genuinely feel compassion for the one who is so consumed with paranoia that all of their conversations center around the enemies that surround them. True love listens, true love responds by encouraging them in the Lord and giving them the Word of God to stand on, and true loves prays for them with a heart that genuinely cares for their well-being. Yes, frustration may enter in – we see in Scripture that even God got frustrated on occasion – but true love responds as God is inclined to respond, with mercy and compassion.
If we genuinely wish to learn to love as God loves, we should thank Him for putting those people into our lives and let Him use them to push us closer to Him.
Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C