“O Lord. How many are my foes!” (Ps3:1)
Have you ever had enemies? Or felt like you did?
Have you ever gotten angry when others say it’s all mind over matter, that you’re misinterpreting people’s statements and actions thinking that they are dead set against you?
I still recall a respected psychologist getting offended when I noted that people can indeed be “bad-minded.”
Hey friend, if that’s your posture, it might well be that you need a life changing experience of having others who are simply bent on misinterpreting your word and actions, destroying your reputation, and making your life a mess. In other words, you might just need the experience of having enemies.
I can understand why someone might feel that enemies are simply of one’s making. I used to think like that too. Until truth confronted me through the actual presence of real live people whose undertaking it became to trample my good name, to bully others into hating me, to make my life a mess. Yes, there were those for whom my destruction was an undertaking, their collective agenda item, it seemed.
The value of the associated harsh experiences is I that I learned that hatred is real, and I understood the psalmist words “many are rising against me”. But I did not stop there.
How you deal with the presence of enemies, though, is what will make or break you.
Like the psalmist you can turn to God also find yourself affirming “but you, O Lord are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.” (Ps 3:3)
You will even go on to boast, “I am not afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around” (Ps 3:6).
It helps to try and put yourself in the place of your haters. I have discovered that people can dislike you if you remind them of their worst selves, but also if you present them with a better option for themselves. They might be seeing through you as if looking through an ice sculpture like the one I photographed. You don’t have to say it verbally, but you can so live that they want to be like you; and rather than affirm you, they choose to envy you instead. You might just be the recipient of adulation that they would rather be directed at them. Trust me, it’s not all nice to have others admire you. That can be costly.
The point that I want to get to though, without writing too much, is that winning over your enemies is doable, especially when you do not aim to gain their friendship, but simply seek to understand what makes them tick. Please don’t waste time and effort trying to get your haters to love you. It may not work. It may take more time than you have, or it may simply increase the intensity of their dislike, and you encounter greater opposition than if you hadn’t tried to fix it.
It is better to accept that people have a right to feel differently about you than your supporters do. Concentrate on doing what is helpful and accept that while you may win some, you cannot win all.
And guess what? Some will be won whether by you or simply through the goodness of God.
There is a promise in Proverbs 16: 7, that when people’s ways please the Lord, God makes their enemies be at peace with them. Now, I don’t want to sound immodest and suggest that my life is a total pleasure to the Lord, but my experience of enemies becoming friends is more real that I could have anticipated. I thought that enemies becoming friends was something that would take years. But no! I have had even younger persons share their reasons for disliking me – sometimes just that they would prefer that I’d chosen them rather than some others as good friends. I have also had older persons share with me, one disclosing that her intense opposition resulted from the fact that her family had not allowed her to be a minster, which is who I am!
You will have enemies, yes.
But please don’t waste God’s time hating them. Show some love, even if you must do it from long distance so that you do not provoke a deepening of their hatred which is good neither for them nor for you.
Thank you, Lord, for deliverance from enemies. May your name be praised! Amen.