God removes people from our lives for a reason, He removes anyone who will stand in the way of the calling He has on our lives. We can trust Him.
When Christ is more important to us than anything and anyone else we will not agonize over the loss of someone who walks away or ignores us. They do it for evil but God means it for good.
We see this in the account of Joseph when his brothers were jealous, throwing him into a well to be sold off into slavery. That action on the part of the brothers was evil but God used it to eventually elevate Joseph to a prominent position, in which he was an authority over his brothers.
Genesis 50: 20 "
" As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good,"
When we feel a loss because of rejection of others when we have studied our own heart in light of Bible truth and found that we could find nothing that we did to cause angst in others, then we can rest assured that God has a purpose, either for this life or for the next.
We must always be sure that we are not at fault, ready to own our flaws and bad judgment, however, in our day there are many people ready to accuse believers of what the others are doing and we are not. Just as Christ was accused of doing His miracles by the power of the devil, we too will be falsely accused in this age of apostasy.
Good is being called evil and evil is being called good in our day and the born-again believer is a particular target of the devil and all those who are influenced by him.
Matthew 5:11
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account."
I have been gossiped about and lied against because I would bring scripture to the conversation in the presence of Christians. In our day most people who say they are Christian have no interest in learning God's Word or even obeying it. They are satisfied to know enough to feel safe but so little they are often violating it unknowingly. Those who violate the scriptures unknowingly will be held accountable for being lazy in refusing to ask the Holy Spirit and search for the answers in the Bible.
Proverbs 11:9
"With his mouth, the godless man would destroy his neighbor, but by knowledge, the righteous are delivered."
Proverbs 19:9
"A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish."
Psalm 109:2
"For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues."
If we speak boldly about the Word of God and remain faithful to His teachings we will experience those who would lie against us, it's a promise from God's Word. The beauty of knowing this is that we do not have to worry about it, we can leave it with Christ, choose carefully our close friends, and sense no obligation whatever to remain friends with people who attempt to ruin our walk with Christ.
Please remember that God warned us that members of our own families would be against us. He made it clear that we can and must remove them from our lives in order to follow Christ.
Luke 14:26-27 "26“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters— yes, even his own life— he cannot be My disciple. 27And whoever does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.…"
Matthew 10:37
"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me;"
John 12:25
"Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
Matthew 10:36 For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ "
We are seeing this as a common occurrence in our day, many children have turned against believing parents, accusing them of things that were not true in order to absolve themselves of their own disrespect and dishonor of their parents.
Some may judge this post as a negative one but it is just the opposite. Those who have been rejected can be encouraged that our Lord warned us of these things to help us learn to move past the attacks and the rejection into a full and joyful life with believers who love the Lord as we love Him.
We have not lost anything when the bio family rejects us, we have gained loving and kind brothers and sisters in Christ who walk in the Spirit and demonstrate all the fruit of the Holy Spirit as a lifestyle. Our family changes from those we were born to, toward those who are born again in the family of Christ.
Matthew 12:48-50
"But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
John 13:34-35
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Matthew 12:50
"For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
See that? Those who love God and live a lifestyle of doing His will are those who are members of the family we are born-again into. We no longer are members of the bio-family who carry our blood unless they too are members of God's family.
One of the reasons so many Christians do not grow in holiness and even regress if they do some growing is because they remain continually with blood relatives who do not love the Lord. They spend more time with their bio-relatives than they do with their born-again family. It ought to be the other way around, we should spend most of our time with born-again brothers and sisters than we do with bio family.
This does not mean we don't love our bio-families, it just means that they are no longer family and that we cannot relate to them anymore because we have been Spiritually and emotionally changed into new creations while bio-family who are not born again remain rebellious thinking in opposing ways to God. These people will hold us back from Spiritual and emotional growth as we diminish our walk to keep them happy.
In Matthew 10:36 it is clear that those in bio-families who are not born again will come against us because of Christ. We must live a life of peace in Christ with most of our relationships to be those who love Christ. We can witness from time to time to the unsaved but they cannot become our constant companions.
