Do Not Take Revenge

By the lovely Sandy Payne

"Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.  (Romans 12:19)

Doesn’t this sound crazy?  I mean, in the world WE live in, you have to defend yourself because, well, nobody else will, right?  But, if we’re after real transformation, we’ve got to be radical and serious about looking more like Christ than the world.

Here’s why this is so hard: it takes an enormous amount of trust to let go when we’ve been wronged and hand it over to God.  It takes a belief that He knows more than we do, that He’ll handle it better than we would, and that His motives, means and His desire for the very best for us and for others is far above our own.

A few years ago, I suffered what I believed to be unfair treatment from some friends.  For weeks, I frantically tried to plead my case by talking to all of the friends involved--explaining how I had been wronged, who was really at fault,  and trying to get to the bottom of who had caused the problem.  In the meantime, I stirred up a hornet’s nest that ultimately led to the loss of several friendships and dissension among the group of Christian women involved.  If I had left the situation in God’s hands, I might have avoided what turned out to be an ugly spectacle of the dark side of female friendships—and I ended up playing the starring role.

Ultimately, the whole issue was my pride.  I wanted to be right.  I wanted to point out how others were wrong.  My pride overrode my desire to please God, to put others first, and trust that God would take care of the situation.

We never have all the information.  We never know every side or every perspective.  But God does.  He can right wrongs in ways that we cannot.  He sees our hearts—and the hearts of others--and can help us sort out emotions and fears and insecurities and conflict in a way that doesn’t leave a wake of damage and destruction behind us.  His ultimate desire for us is peace, but we have to leave selfish selves behind if we are to obtain it.

I am learning to check my motives when I feel I’ve been wronged, and to ask God constantly to weed out any selfish motives or emotional strongholds that the Enemy may use to cause dissension.  And ultimately, it boils down to whether or not we really believe that God will handle our lives better than we can.  His ways really are higher than ours.  (Isaiah 55:9)

In humility, consider others more highly than yourselves.  Look not to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. - Philippians 2:3

“Love has a hem to her garment 

That reaches the very dust. 

It sweeps the streets and lanes, 

And because it can, it must.”

--Mother Theresa

As I sit here at my computer for what seems to be the hundredth time I have tried to write this, I watch the train go through the woods behind my house and realize that this is the first time in months that I haven’t felt like I have been hit by one. 

For all of the lovely things that are said about love, marriage and relationships and the idealistic way we romanticize the wedding, the babies & life forever intertwined we fail to realize, and perhaps prepare other young ladies for the cold, hard reality that marriage is hard. So hard, in fact, that it just might be the most difficult thing you will ever do, assuming that one of you doesn’t give up on the other altogether. This year has been a true test of love for me. Not just love for my husband, but for God, our family & myself. Queen Elizabeth II said, “Greif is the price we pay for love.” If that is true, then, this year, my price has been paid. 

Merriam-Webster’s definition of love to me seems weak. So, I will bypass it completely and get to what God says about it. For all the ways we, as humans, think about and describe love, really examining the scriptures, highlights the lack of real understanding we really have, when compared to the way we live. God is really specific about what love is. I came to the understanding, this year, that I really had no idea what it was like to really love like God taught us to. Please don’t misunderstand, I do not have it licked, but pain is a great teacher. 

The short version of what God says about love is this: Love is patient, kind, rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and NEVER fails (from 1 Corinthians 13, of course). What I discovered about myself this year is that loving comes easy when someone can love you back. When the road is smooth and you “are in it together,” you find comfort in the love you share. The true test of love is what you do when you find yourself in it alone? What do you know about love when your husband doesn’t come home? Or your family walks out of your life? How about when people you love purposely try to destroy you? What happens when people you love find themselves in a struggle or place where they aren’t capable of loving you in return? What then? How do you respond? What is in you? 

I have come to understand that there comes a time in every relationship where you much choose whether you are going to really love or not and it has NOTHING to do with what anyone else says or does. It is about you! 

Loving others is a way we serve and honor God. This perspective makes it possible to have unconditional love and to display a love that many humans just don’t understand. When you get there, when you really learn how to love, you discover that no matter how educated, how talented, how much money you have or don’t, what neighborhood you live in, what church you go to, if you go to church at all, or how well you control yourself or others, love is about giving. That giving is love in its purest form when that love is given regardless. It says, “I love you- no matter what!”

“When you love someone you no longer put yourself first! Putting your own needs, wants and even your rights last...We know that to be the truth, don't we? Love IS about sacrifice.” (J.R.)

So, when I get asked the question, “Why did you stay?” My answer is simple. I stayed because God taught me what love is, He taught me about forgiveness and that being who He called me to be is, quite simply, between me and Him. I told a friend of mine recently, “If you run every time a catastrophe happens, you never get to see God work a miracle.” I know this to be true because I have lived it and am now living with the blessing of watching God fix what man could not. I know it to be true because I am watching God restore what people told me could not be fixed. I am watching God change what people told me could/would not change. The greatest part? I can say that it has all been worth it. When you do what God is putting in your heart (regardless of what people in your life tell you is best), you will find that God is faithful. He knows the beginning from the end and He always knows what is best for us even if getting there hurts like crazy. Learning to trust him is hard, learning to obey Him is even harder, but I promise- the journey is worth it to get where He wants us to be. 

I have learned that the train that comes to destroy you is often the one that will take you where God wants you go. 

“Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take. “ --Anthony Robbins