Daily Devotional – July 14, 2020

Well, a good Tuesday afternoon to you got a little bit of a different setting today on my I'm at my home office, my outdoor home office this morning, and it actually is morning. I'm recording this ahead of time.

I have a funeral to attend and but I did want to did want to share this and it is outdoors. So it's, it's gonna be kind of like one of those Joe Biden things where you're gonna hear the birds chirping in the background.

And maybe somebody's weed eater and the cars go by and all that stuff. But I thought it'd provide a little different ambience for our devotional time today. But I had this dream and I, I usually don't remember what I dream, but I had this dream that actually woke me up this morning.

So I don't remember all the details of it. I just remember that Chris and I were talking with some kind of a counselor psychologist. It was not because of marriage problems or anything like that. I don't even remember what I don't even know what the context of it was.

It was about dealing with a problem with somebody else or something like that. I don't know. But in the course of that conversation with the counselor psychologist, I just happened to mention that I grew up in a household, in a home where dad was very authoritarian.

We were very conservative. He had a lot of rules, regulations and pretty strictly, rigidly carried those things out. Not a whole lot of, not a whole lot of grace. And, you know, anytime we did anything wrong, it was met with harshness and so forth.

And now, as I, I mean, I'm thinking this in my dream that this guy is not even a believer, but he made a comment that suggested something to the effect that the way to, to deal with that personally is not to allow the other person's evil to make me do evil or cause me to do evil, but instead to deal with their evil with, with, with good in its place.

Overcoming Evil With Good

And it was like, in my dream, a light went on. And then shortly after that, I woke up and it was like 430 this morning. I woke up and the verse is running through my mind. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And, you know, my alarm was set for six o 'clock and it's 430 and I'm like, yeah, I want to go back to sleep. But this thing just kept playing over and over and over again in my mind. And I'm thinking, I got to, I got to remember that verse.

Don't be overcome with evil, overcome evil with good. Don't be, you know, so. Bottom line was I ended up getting up at a quarter after five or something like that anyway, and, you know, went to my notebook, got, grabbed my coffee, went outside, turned on the patio light and, you know, just wrote down a few thoughts along this line.

Applying Romans 12:21 to a Public Altercation

But the thing that struck me about that, about that verse is the context in which we're living right now with all of the evil and the wretchedness of stuff and people that are behaving just horribly. I saw a video yesterday of a woman who was apparently had just gone into a restaurant to pick up some food for her family and had a couple of bags full of food and she's walking out.

And she said she didn't realize it, but she bumped into the daughter of a woman as they were coming in the restaurant. And that, and turned into an altercation that just escalated with the result, final result being that the woman who initially had the bags of food, she was a, she had a concealed carry permit and she was carrying and she ended up pulling out her pistol because a whole bunch of people were now surrounding her and calling her a racist and calling her ignorant and all this kind of stuff she felt terribly threatened.

Well, you couldn't see, you didn't see all the video. You didn't see all that happened. I'm listening to her story and she did share that, you know, she did that. I mean, she admitted it. That part was on video.

But what was also on the video was apparently after the woman whose child got bumped with a bag started, you know, you know, lashing out at this woman. The woman lashed out back and, you know, used the F word against her a few times and all this.

And the thing just continued to escalate. And so that was kind of, that video was kind of fresh on my mind. And then I'm awakened by this dream I had and then the verse playing through my mind. Don't be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.

And I immediately thought of that scenario and wondered how could that have been handled differently? How could that have been handled differently? If, you know, the woman whose kid got bumped, I didn't see the color of their skin or anything like that.

But with the yelling of being racist, I'm guessing that they were probably a black family.

I don't know.

Just seemed that way. And I thought, okay, how could the woman who walked out, how could she have handled it differently so that it didn't get to the point where she pulled a gun? And I thought about that from my own standpoint, because I'm a believer and I'm supposed to be different, right?

The context of that verse, which is Romans 12, 21, do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good. In the context of that verse, there are a couple of other important verses. Right before that, Paul says, if your enemy hungers, give him something to eat.

If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. And just before that, he says in verse 18, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. So I think these ideas, these exhortations that Paul is giving us, these are the kind of exhortations that need to form the fabric of our lives.

They need to be the underlying manner in which we live. So in other words, we can't wait till we get to an altercation and somebody lashes out at us or somebody does something evil to us and count on us to do the same.

We don't want it at that time to remember, oh yeah, somebody's done evil to me. I got to do good. No, this just needs to be our default way of thinking that when somebody does something evil to me, my default response needs to be to do good, to do good, to try to de-escalate.

Responding to Evil Without Excusing Crime

Now, let me be sure I'm clear that I'm not talking about overlooking or ignoring criminal behavior. So if somebody is doing evil and that evil is a crime, doing good doesn't mean you just let them off and you just say, oh, that's okay, you know, dah, dah, dah.

No, that's not what it's talking about. This is more like a personal injury thing. This is like, you know, like this scenario where the woman bumps the other girl, the girl, and the mother of the girl who got bumped starts lashing out.

That's the evil that's being done. It's more of a personal affront kind of a thing. Respond with good as much as lies within you live peaceably. Now, I think another idea here is that I think we as Christians can very easily shortchange ourselves with the first part of that as much as lies within you, as much as is possible live peaceably with all.

My point is that we can give too much credit to ourselves for living peaceably. And I think we have to be more honest with ourselves. I think we have to just be honest with ourselves. Am I really, am I really doing everything I can to live peaceably with this person who's got a hostile attitude toward me?

And if I'm not, then where do I need to, where do I need to change? Do I need to change my thinking? Do I need to change my behavior? Don't be overcome with evil. Don't let their evil toward you cause you to respond in kind.

Don't you be overcome by evil and be evil. Overcome evil with good. So with this kind of a default perspective on things, let's look at the, let's look at the evil that is, that is being done. Mostly a lot of yelling and screaming and, you know, profanity and, you know, shaking of gestures and that kind of thing.

Look at that kind of evil. If that was done to you, think through, what would you do? How could you respond with good that might deescalate the situation? Maybe nothing you do would, would work. But that's where you can rest your conscience and say, well, you know, I tried to do everything.

I wondered, for example, with this scenario, what would have happened if, when the woman, the woman whose daughter got bumped, if she started yelling, when she started yelling, if the, the bumper turned around and said, hey, you know what, I, I'm really sorry.

And the woman just escalates. You're just an ignorant racist and all that kind of stuff. And then what if the woman just put her bags in the van and turned around and said, you know what, let me go in and buy you dinner.

I'm really sorry about this. Let me go in and buy you dinner. I wonder what would have happened. I remember a few years ago, several years ago now, I think it was like the first, maybe a year, summer or two after we moved to Sterling.

So that would have been 16, 17 years ago, maybe. One of the neighbors of the church, not really friendly to the church. And we had a bunch of our people were out playing softball in the field next to the church, a big field.

And this neighbor sat out on his driveway just watching, just watching. And somebody, sure enough, somebody hit a foul ball and the foul ball landed in another neighbor's yard. And, and turns out that the yard happened to be the neighbor who's watching, it happened to be his mother.

And he got all upset and he started yelling about, you know, get out of her yard and all this kind of thing. And so I went over to him and I tried to talk to him and calm him down a little bit. And he's, he's, he's irate.

He says, every time you guys come out here, you're, you're getting in her yard. And, you know, one time somebody hit a ball and we just got done siding her garage and the ball, foul ball, put a dent in the siding in her garage.

And he's just unloading on me, just really angry. And so fortunately God gave me the grace at that moment. And I said, you know what, I'll tell you what, just let me know how much it would cost to replace that.

And, and we will be more than happy to, we'd be more than happy to cover that.

So, well, you know, okay, all right.

Never heard another word from him. Never had another problem with him at all. That was just one occasion. And I realize I'm realistic enough to know that evil people don't always respond to good. And they may just escalate the evil.

But nevertheless, I was impressed by that, by that verse. It struck me this morning, and especially in this culture, this climate, where there's so much evil going on, that we need to be careful as God's people, that we just don't automatically, our default is not that we respond in kind.

Instead, our default needs to be that we try to overcome the evil with the good. So let's pray and ask God to help us to do just that very thing, shall we? Our Father and our God, we realize we're living in a day where the evil is just so pronounced.

And we know that in our strength and our flesh, we can't overcome it all. But Lord, you've given us directives. You've given us principles in your word to follow. And I pray that our default way of looking at things would be to try to find some good that we can do to the person who would be doing evil to us.

And may we see the blessing of that kind of confrontation or that kind of unfortunate situation. May we see it de-escalate, and may that evil be overcome. We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen.

All right, well, have a good rest of your Tuesday, and trust that God will bless you richly in the course of the day. Take care.