It’s not easy to love everyone, but it is the call on every prophets life. To test us in this, God deliberately puts people around us who are meant to be loved by us. Oftentimes, we will have to be very creative to love them; some of them, by design, are not easy to love. But those unlovable ones, ironically, teach us the most about God’s heart.
I call people like these grace growers, sister sandpaper, and brother rub. They cultivate the grace of God in our life by forcing us to be intentional about loving them. Jesus taught us about these grace growers:
Luke 6: 27-but I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the way you want them to treat you.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; For he himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your father is merciful.
As you venture out into the prophetic not seeing what is wrong with a person but speaking to their potential in Christ. There may be those who think it is their calling from God to expose you as a false prophet and protect the body of Christ from your ministry. They genuinely think that they have a mandate from God to stop your ministry- John 16: 2.
God allows in his wisdom what he could easily prevent by his power. The opposition of others drives us to strive to be an excellent minister. Their criticism pushes us into a place of continuously upgrading our material and the quality of presentation. When we learn to respond to those who criticize us encouraging them in their own walk with God our nature and character begins to be upgraded. But we have to bless others enthusiastically. Their hostility against us causes us to move in the opposite spirit that is Christ likeness. We used to get offended, angry, and affronted but now we move in the opposite spirit.
When we meet these grace growers the purpose of the father is to change our character and personality. He is seeking to beautify us by making us just like Jesus. In our ignorance we cannot see God’s purpose in these circumstances. But everything the Lord does in our lives is to make us into the image of Jesus Christ.
The father places great value on our becoming like him. We learned to put character transformation at the top of our list of responses to the workings of God.
We need to understand the purpose of grace growers. They are present in our life to teach us the grace that is currently ours to be made in the image of Jesus. Grace growers’ are providing an unconscious opportunity on their part for us to experience a breakthrough in the image of God. If we approach these situations from a functional and not a relational paradigm we won’t change. Pride and vanity may change some of the things we do but not our heart.
We are supposed to learn how to be long-suffering, to be patient with joy; blessing and not cursing; How to love those who express enmity towards us; How to be kind and gracious in the face of unkind opposition.
We begin to pray positively for these people, having compassion, kindness and love for them. We lose our victim mindset. We cease to be offended by their actions and become profoundly grateful to the Lord instead. We learn our lesson and it becomes a foundation of all ongoing transformation to come.
Grace growers are people you love to hate and who hate to love you. They are a gift of God to bring a pressing transformation to bear quickly in our lives. The better the grace grower you know, than the new one who will have to take their place!
God puts these people in our lives to teach us about being Christ like. How do we love our enemy? By refusing to see them as such. We all have difficult people around us, but they are going to experientially teach us how to discover and explore the love of God. It will kill us to love some of them; break open our heart to the Holy Spirit. God wants us to look at his children with the same love that he feels. The harder they are to love; the more God will pour himself into us to accomplish that action.
What a mystery this is! The very people we find the hardest to get along with can bring us the closest to Christ. To connect with someone, we must see them as Jesus sees them. We have to look beyond the rubbish, looking for the baby Jesus under the trash. We must look beyond the brave front we may put up and see each other for who we truly are in Christ. When we see someone the way God sees them, we can then speak to that treasure in them.