Matthew 15:8-9
8 ‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from Me.
9 And in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”A
Have you ever had a friend or family member bring you a gift on a holiday but there was an "off" sense that there wasn't kindness, love or empathy involved in the giving of the gift? The sense that the gift was given to show off to others or to manipulate the one who received the gift, which was so strong that the joy one would feel at receiving a gift was sort of sucked out of the room.
When love and kindness are absent when a gift is presented there is an empty feeling that you wish those giving the gift would have just not given it at all.
1 Corinthians 13:1 says, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal"
When false love is shown with the intent of impressing others there is a sense that contempt is involved and not love.
Someone once used the Bible to justify irritating someone with whom she was having a fight. She giggled a little and proclaimed that she was going to "heap hot coals of kindness" on a friend who no longer wanted to talk to her. So in her effort to irritate her friend with the excuse it was biblical, she continued to approach her in parking lots to say hello, knowing the friend didn't want to have anything to do with her.
The Bible verse used was;
Romans 12:20 "
“But if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”"
This passage did not tell us to be kind to heap hot coals to irritate, it is telling us to be what we should be and it might heap hot coals. Deliberately doing a friendly deed to cause a person to feel frustrated is not the hot coals of the Bible.
We know there was pride involved when the giggle about "heaping hot coals" was the evidence that it was manipulation to appear superior to someone else. The one on the receiving end of this would see the contempt in the one who wanted to appear superior. This selfish and rude method would cause further frustration in the targeted person. We are not to "try" to heap hot coals, we are to be loving and kind as God told us to, it may heap hot coals, but if our desire is to be the hot coals ourselves then we have wrongly used Scripture to justify rudeness to irritate. There is no love in this, only a desire to cause more hurt to the person who is the target.
I am so glad God has shown me this principle through personal experiences, to give me first-hand exposure to something we are encountering and that will increase in these last days.
My goal is to not react or respond to the covert provocations of those who do not love Christ and because they do not love Him they do not love me or anyone who loves Christ.
We shouldn't take it personally because it isn't about us, it's about our walk with Christ that irritates the demons who are motivating those who have no defenses against Satan.
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