If you wear your heart on your sleeve, you risk getting it broken by a stranger. But if that heart is a heart for Jesus, He will always protect and restore it.
Since re-launching this 7 Days Time website, I have been making more of an effort to suck less at Twitter. (Great news: I’m getting there and no longer despise it.)
However, when we do “dangerous” things like writing about our Jesus-hearts or sharing Scripture with the world via social media, we inadvertently invite the haters to stroll on in.
A few weeks ago, I tagged Bible Gateway in a tweet that included some Scripture. Well. Bible Gateway retweeted it (yay!) but a very vocal Jesus-hater got ahold of it.
And this dude came at me with guns a-blazing. His Twitter handle included the word “atheist,” which made my heart hurt for Him right away. His response to my Jesus-tweet was something along the lines of “You aren’t enjoying life because you are just waiting to die.”
Um, OK and ouch. When I first read his response, I wasn’t really offended– but was sorrowful and ached for him. (Which I think says a lot about how Christ continues to work in my life. In a previous season, I would have snapped something back at Him that wouldn’t be fit to print.)
I knew he wanted to fight, but that wasn’t what I was going for… So the next few exchanges went like this:
Me: “Living life for Jesus now, waiting to die and meet Him later. It’s gonna be great. 🙂 Praying for you!”
The Hater Dude: “Enjoy praying for me. While you’re doing that, I’ll be actually LIVING my life.”
Me: “Nothing I would rather be doing, brother… God says hello. :-)”
The conversation continued until he started to get really ugly and personal. I prayed and God released me from the conversation. But this experience has stuck with me and I have had a few revelations since then.
1. Haters are gonna hate. But Jesus is gonna love. How true, how true! Jesus warned us in 1 John 3:13 “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.” Being a Christian isn’t the easiest path we could choose, but loving like Jesus sure is the most rewarding. The world hated Jesus, but look what He did for us anyways. Now that’s true love and no amount of “haterade” could drown it.
2. Talk about some heartache! How incredibly sad not to know the abundant life that is in Christ?!? I can’t help but wonder what his version of “enjoying” life means? Because I tell you what friends, I get so much more joy of life NOW in a single day by following Christ than in all the days before combined. This is also motivation to share God’s word with those who are hatin’ on us– because hate doesn’t just happen. I am willing to bet a vast majority of the naysayers in our life are masking some bit of pain. What an incredible gift it is to share His love with them! Which brings me to my next point…
3. Only Jesus saves. I heard this phrase “Only Jesus Saves” back when I was a Human Resources representative in my first big kid job in reference to trying to “save” employees from getting terminated. But I have adopted it as my Christian call as well. We aren’t called to SAVE people– only Christ can do that. But we CAN be a seed… When we respond to hate or hurt with love, we disarm the power and plant a teeny-tiny seed of Christ’s love. Jesus used his last few breaths on that cross to ask God to forgive those who did that to Him. I think that we ALL have that capacity to do the same since Christ lives in us.
Friends, no matter what you are called to do for God in this world, be it writing, parenting, witnessing, or working, there will ALWAYS be naysayers. There will always be people who say you aren’t doing your job correctly or they will be trying to bring you down.
But here’s the thing: We are called to love like Jesus. We don’t answer to anyone but God. And HIS opinion matters. So as long as you are living for Him and walking in His life, you just let those haters go on hatin’… and you keep on sharing that Jesus lovin’.
There’s no life like one lived for Christ,
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” ~John 15:18-19 NIV
