How do you deal with difficult people? Who is acting as your enemy? If they were suddenly dropped in your hands, what would you do with them? David dealt with a number of difficult people during the years before he ascended Israel’s throne. King Saul was trying to kill him. Nabal insulted him, returning evil for good. God protected David not only from his enemies but also from taking their lives into his own hands. His choices point us to his descendant Jesus who loved his enemies and told us to do the same. Message based on 1 Samuel 24:8-17, 25:32-35, 26:8-11.
Notes:
Duane Brooks: When others try to harm us, we may take matters into our own hands, or place them in God’s hands.
Lewis Carroll: “Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, "Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you.—Come, I'll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I've nothing to do." Said the mouse to the cur, "Such a trial, dear Sir, With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath." "I'll be judge, I'll be jury," Said cunning old Fury: "I'll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.”
Duane Brooks: My enemy is not mine to dispose of or deal with. Even and especially my enemy belongs to the Lord.
Duane Brooks: It is not only what we do but the way we do it that affects our lives. The weight of harming another hangs around our necks like an albatross. No, more like an anvil – the weight is too great to bear.
Brennan Manning: The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
Charles Spurgeon: The Christian is not allowed to hate anyone.
T. S. Eliot: Refuse to harm our difficult people, and release them to God.
Josemaria Escriva: Don't say, "That person bothers me." Think: That person sanctifies me."
Henri Nouwen: We may transform hostility into hospitality.
Henri Nouwen: Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.
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