Growing up I had this friend who was in every class with me from kindergarten through high school graduation.  Really, I had a frenemy in every class with me – it’s just that the word hadn’t been invented yet.  I didn’t have a difficult childhood but there were times she tried to make it one.  If she was bored or had no “better” people to hang out with, she was kind to me, but the second anyone cooler than me (and I wasn’t anywhere near the top of her list in that department, by the way) cared to show her attention, she kick me to the curb in a hot minute.

I tried, oh I tried, so hard to get her to like me.  Nothing I ever did was good enough, and, for some reason, I still gave her opportunity after opportunity to hurt me.  My high school journals are full of this swinging pendulum.

July 29, 2002: “God, I am having so much trouble loving _______ again. Maybe she is insecure about her volleyball ability but every time I make the slightest mistake she treats me as if I’ve committed an atrocious crime and she can’t trust me anymore!”

Somehow in the midst of it all, I wrote out another prayer, “God, I can’t wait for you to change her heart anymore.  It hurts too much and I can’t bear it. So change mine instead so this doesn’t destroy me.”

I remember so many nights just sobbing in my room over the injustice of it all.  My poor mother – I’m sure many of those times I was overreacting, but she said with me and spoke Truth to me nonetheless.  I distinctly remember her encouraging to walk with grace and dignity, confident that the Lord would deal with her in His time.  She assured me this would happen, whether I witnessed it or not.

Those words, lots of prayer, and the kindness of God got me through the rest of high school  My frenemy didn’t change, but we graduated and went our separate ways and her opinions no longer mattered and she no longer had opportunities to reject and belittle me.

….and now God is dealing with her….

And there is no part of me that takes delight in this fact.

I drove home Friday afternoon for a funeral. My frenemy was there, her face showing the result of sin, brokenness, and devastation.  She has endured more pain in the last 10 years that probably anyone in my graduating class, and was delivered another blow this week.  The circumstances of her life are such that she can’t cleverly hide her past choices and consequences.  She wears her brokenness for all to see.  She’s been humbled.

And there was no part of my heart that felt God had finally given me justice.  I didn’t look at her and think, “Finally – she got what she deserved.” Instead, the only prayer that left my lips was, “No more, Lord.  The one you love is sick. Come heal. Come redeem.  No more.”

In that moment I realized God had indeed answered my prayer.  Granted, I am now about 15 years removed from the worst of the incident, but many of us are able to hold grudges longer than that.  Instead, I realize He has changed my heart.  We’re still in the midst of whatever he’s doing in hers, and I am going to pray every day that the resolution is one of abundant life.

But the miracle I want you to hear today is the work He’s done in me.  In the last fifteen years, He’s taught me the depths of my own sin. He’s humbled me, softened me, and given me a deeper measure of empathy and compassion.  He’s changed my heart and without realizing it, I’ve come to love my enemy.  I only want good for someone who once seemed to enjoy inflicting me with pain, and I appeal to Him to have mercy and redeem.  Because I know if He can change a heart as cold and embittered as mine, there’s nothing he can’t restore.

 

From The Valley of Vision [emphasis mine]:

“My God,

Thou has helped me to see, that whatever good be in honour and rejoicing, how good is he who gives them; that blessedness does not lie so much in receiving good from and in thee, but in holding forth thy glory and virtue; that it is an amazing thing to see Deity in a creature, speaking, acting, filling, shining through it; that nothing is good but thee, that I am near good when I am near thee, that to be like thee is a glorious thing: this is my magnet, my attraction.

Thou art all my good in times of peace, my only support in days of trouble, my one sufficiency when life shall end.

Help me to see how good thy will is in all, and even when it crosses mine, teach me to be pleased with it.

Grant me to feel thee in fire, and food and every providence, and to see that thy many gifts and creatures are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me.

Thou bottomless fountain of all good, I give myself to thee out of love, for all I have or own is thine, my goods, family, church, self, to do with as thou wilt, to honour thyself by me, and by all mine.

It it consistent with thy eternal counselors, the purpose of thy grace, and the great ends of thy glory, then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts; If not, let me resign myself to thy wiser determinations.“

“We know, of course, that God and the devil are engaged in battle in the world and that the devil also has a say in death. In the face of death we cannot simply speak in some fatalistic way, ‘God wills it’, but we must juxtapose it with the other reality, ‘God does not will it’. Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that is stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death. Here the sharp antithesis between ‘God wills it’ and ‘God does not will it’ comes to a head and also finds its resolution. God accedes to that which God does not will, and from now on death itself must therefore serve God. From now on, the ‘God wills it’ encompasses even the ‘God does not will it’. God will the conquering of death through the death of Jesus Christ. Only in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ has death been drawn into God’s power, and it must now serve God’s own aims. It is not some fatalistic surrender but rather a living faith in Jesus Christ, who died and rose for us, that is able to cope profoundly with death.

“In life with Jesus Christ, death as a general fate approaching us from without is confronted by death from within, one’s own death, the free death of daily dying with Jesus Christ. Those who live with Christ die daily to their own will. Christ in us gives us over to death so that he can live within us. Thus our inner dying grows to meet that death from without. Christians receive their own death in this way, and in this way our physical death very truly becomes not the end but rather the fulfillment of our life with Jesus Christ. Here we enter into community with the One who at his own death was able to say, ‘It is finished.'”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted in Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet Spy by Eric Metaxas, p.384.

My Dear Lord,

I can but tell thee that thou knowest I long for nothing but thyself, nothing but holiness, nothing but union with thy will.

Thou has given me these desires, and thou alone canst give me the thing desired.

My soul longs for communion with thee, for mortification of indwelling corruption, especially spiritual pride.

How precious it is to have a tender sense and clear apprehension of the mystery of godliness, of true holiness!

What a blessedness to be like thee as must as it is possible for a creature to be like its Creator!

Lord, give me more of thy likeness; enlarge my soul to contain fullness of holiness; engage me to live more for three.

Help me to be less pleased with my spiritual experiences, and when I feel at ease after sweet communings, teach me it is far too little I know and do.

Blessed Lord, let me climb up near to three, and love, and long, and plead, and wrestle with thee, and pant for deliverance from the body of sin, for my heart is wandering and lifeless, and my soul mourns to think it should ever lose sight of its Beloved.

Wrap my life in divine love, and keep my ever desiring thee, always humble and resigned to thy will, more fixed on thyself, that I may be more fitted for doing and suffering.

Taken from The Valley of Vision, “Longings After God”, p.230-231