“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:44 (NIV)

The plastic seats were green. The desks a dirty beige. The perfect pale color to make pencil marks easy to read.

That’s how I saw what was making the group of girls in front of me laugh. They looked at me and then added to Jennifer’s desk art: a frizzy-headed stick figure with huge buck teeth and crazed eyes. I knew even before I saw the name scribbled, she’d drawn me. Me. An awful caricature of me.

It’s been years since I sat at that dirty beige desk. But it hasn’t been years since I’ve had those same feelings of rejection and hurt. Of course, they aren’t from girls drawing pictures. But meanness hurts, no matter what age or how it’s delivered.

You can take the girl out of middle school, but for many of us, you can’t take the middle school out of the girl.

If you’ve been hurt in this way, you know what I’m talking about. If we’re a stuffer type of person, we want to withdraw and get away from the source of our hurt. If we’re more of an exploder person, we want to attack so they’ll feel as badly as we do.

But here’s where things get a little complicated. Jesus flies in the face of conventional wisdom and instructs us, “love your enemies.”

Seriously?

Something deep inside us whispers, “Don’t you dare love this person. This situation is the exception.”

Let the internal battle begin.

But what if I were to assure you Jesus isn’t being cruel or naive in His command for us to love? He’s actually showing us how to get free from the sting of another person’s wounds. When we’re wounded, we can either pursue healing by extending love back, or, we can refuse healing and allow the “rejection infection” to set into our wound.

Here are three things to remember:

The Command

My job isn’t to fix my enemies. My job is to be obedient to God in how I deal with them. And He tells us in our key verse how He wants us to deal with those we would label our enemy.

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” (Matthew 5:44).

The Caution

If there is abuse, we must get wise people to help us and learn to love from afar. How? By forgiving the person who hurt us — releasing their offense into the hands of God. By trusting God (and others in authority) to reveal to them their wrong and deal with their actions.

But we must also remember this: Forgiveness and restoration don’t always go hand-in-hand. You can forgive someone but not necessarily do everyday life with them. Ask God to give you discernment to know when and how to love from afar.

The Catalyst

So, back to Jennifer and the hurtful drawing. I wish I could relive that moment with the knowledge I have now. Jennifer drew that picture because of her own insecurities. And while it’s tough to have compassion for someone who’s hurting us in the moment of rejection, it is possible to have compassion for their obvious hurt. Hurt people hurt people.

Dig beneath the surface of a mean girl and you’ll find a girl riddled with insecurities and possibly even self-hatred.

Romans 12:20 says, “On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’” (NIV)

Jennifer was hungry and thirsty for affirmation. And the only way she could figure out how to get it was to make those around her laugh at me.

What might have happened if I were to have walked by her desk and given this desperate girl a drink from the living water? “Jennifer, you are beautiful. Do you know that?”

Not in a million years could I have done that in middle school. But I’m not in middle school any longer.

And now’s a good time to remember that.

Dear Lord, I am thankful You don’t give up on me. Please help me love those who hurt me, and teach me when to seek restoration and when to let a relationship go. I want my relationships to honor You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

***

TRUTH FOR TODAY:

Colossians 3:13, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (NIV)

RELATED RESOURCES:

Rejection isn’t just an emotion we feel. It’s a message that’s sent to the core of who we are, causing us to believe lies about ourselves, others and God. Join us as we deal with rejection’s infection in our free Online Bible Study of Lysa TerKeurst’s book, Uninvited: Living Loved When You Feel Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely. The study begins TODAY, but you can still sign up!

You can purchase your copy of Uninvited here.

REFLECT AND RESPOND:

Think on a situation that involved a “mean girl.” That girl might be someone close to you, an acquaintance or maybe even you. Pray for her. If it’s you, pray that God will show you areas in your life only He can fill.

© 2016 by Lysa TerKeurst. All rights reserved.