In God We Trust?

2 John 5-6 And now I beg you, lady (Cyria), not as if I were issuing a new charge (injunction or command), but [simply recalling to your mind] the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. ⁶ And what this love consists in is this: that we live and walk in accordance with and guided by His commandments (His orders, ordinances, precepts, teaching). This is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you continue to walk in love [guided by it and following it].

It sounds so simple to obey the command to love. But in reality it’s easy to love the people we like or that love and like us. The difficult people not so much. I’ve been pastoring for over 30 years and I have had the “blessing” of being on the receiving end of all of the above. Practicing this command hasn’t gotten any easier but I can say that the Lord has given me some tools to help cope with the pain that comes from rejection, hurt, criticism and pain. What are some of those tools?

1. Become like Jesus. That’s a simple but profound truth. It’s been said you can’t become an overcomer till you have been given something to overcome. The same is true of becoming like Jesus. If I am going to “become” then I will need to face the challenges that do not look or sound like Jesus. When I am challenged I am learning to see that as an opportunity to become like Jesus. In other words, I lean into the pain. John 4 states that Jesus had need to go to Samaria. Samaritans hated Jews. Thus you can infer from this passage that Jesus had need to be rejected. He knew He would grow through it.
2. Pray to see the person or difficult situation as Jesus sees them (or it). In the Book of Genesis God goes looking for Adam and Eve after they had eaten the forbidden fruit. Adam tells the Lord that he had hidden himself because he was afraid; and I was naked. The Lord wisely asks, Who told you that you were naked? The enemy, the accuser of the brothers, is in the full-time business of reminding all of us that we are naked. God on the other hand covers our sins, nakedness, shame, and guilt.
3. Release the person from your expectations. One of the weirdest passages in the Bible is found in John 2:24: But Jesus [for His part] did not trust Himself to them, because He knew all [men];…How can Jesus, Who loves all people perfectly, not trust them? 1 Corinthian 13:7 states that Love always trusts. I asked the Lord about this and He gave me a great answer. He reminded me of my children when they were toddlers. He asked, Robert did you love your children when they were toddlers? I said, Absolutely Lord! He asked, Would you have trusted them to drive your car? I answered, Absolutely not! He asked, Did you love your children less because you didn’t trust them to drive the car? His point was made. Jesus loves, and He always trusts – yet He has realistic expectations of what we are and are not capable of doing and being.

Chuck Swindoll author of, Make Up Your Mind, writes that: In the 1960s a teacher was given a roster showing the actual I.Q. test scores of the students of one class, and for another class a roster in which the I.Q. column had been (mistakenly) filled in with the students’ locker numbers. The teacher assumed that the locker numbers were the actual I.Q.s of the students when the rosters were posted at the beginning of the semester. After a year it was discovered that in the first class the students with high actual I.Q. scores had performed better than those with low ones. But in the second class the students with higher locker numbers scored significantly higher than those with lower locker numbers!

When we shift our focus, and expectations from others onto Jesus, He empowers us to do all the above. Which really is all about trust. Who do you trust? Isn’t it funny that we have trouble trusting Jesus and others? Yet, we trust ourselves – more than them – to protect us from being harmed or hurt. We say we Love Him. If love always trusts then our focus will need to shift from us – onto Him.