He’s for my enemy, He’s not against me

Ashley O'Neal
Nov 2 · 3 min read

I have been saying this to myself out loud for weeks now-months if I’m being honest. If I’m remaining honest, it is one of the biggest struggles in my relationship with God.

“But God, this person sins in this way.” “But God, she treats me that way.” “But God, why am I doing all of the right things and letting go and forgiving and searching my heart and being better and yet. they. are. blessed.” Mmhmm. Go ahead and tell me you don’t have that narrative every once in a while (or every 3 minutes). It’s real tough to write all this out loud right here on the interwebs for the masses, but knowing in my heart that it’s truly my struggle is even worse.

He is for my enemy, He is not against me.

It is so easy to see other people win and feel sorry for ourselves. Our culture really seems to thrive now on showing the best of the best, and subsequently feeling sorry for ourselves that our best isn’t ‘as best’ as someone else’s. Despite my internal narrative, my struggle is not about seeing people who have hurt me, or who consistently do things the way I would absolutely not do them, or who I don’t even know at all receive blessings that I think are unfair. My struggle is in forgetting my blessings, and knowing I am loved despite my shortcomings the same way that every other soul on this planet is loved. Being a “reborn” Christian, it is even easier yet to see someone else’s wins and accuse God of having some weird ass exclusivity clause that names only me as the holder of the short stick. 7.5 billion people and it’s me? Really?

By grace and grace alone, God is for me. Time and again I am reminded of all my ridiculous shortcomings and that though my faith is small His love is big. And so I remind myself time and time again that though my faith in many people in my life (and out of it )is small, my love for them can still be big. And as I practice over and over “He is for my enemy, He is not against me”, I find that my heart continues to soften toward those who I find so incredibly difficult to give big love to. My narrative begins to change into a celebration and a hope that they’ll recognize their blessing and it will change their life for the better. I begin to wonder just how many times they had to lose and to be heartbroken and fail and be disappointed and how all those things play into how they treat me or the people around them. At the very end of the story I am left remembering that in reality there is only one enemy-it’s the one trying to convince me that I’m holding that damn short stick.

I don’t have the short stick. You don’t have the short stick. There is no short stick. And because He is for our enemy, we can be too.

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