“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Matthew 5:44

Refinement can be a really painful process. Sometimes God uses our enemies as the sandpaper to smooth out the rough edges. Someone has been harassing me online for well over a year now. I don’t know the exact reason why they are doing it, but I can bet it isn’t coming from a good place; which is usually the case with a mocker.

In the latest flare up of their internet smear campaign shenanigans I could clearly see it was an attack from the enemy. It was a trap for me to fall into and get distracted by. Some really hurtful things were said and what hurt the most is they aren’t even true. I believe the person who wrote them knows they aren’t true as well. Isn’t this exactly what the enemy does? He slings lies at us in an attempt to try and be destructive. I have heard before that the best lie is the one closest to the truth. This is how our enemy operates.

Even though I could see it was an attack, even though I knew where it came from, I still began to walk down a path of despair because the pain was just so great. I felt hopeless. I felt hurt. I felt it was all really unfair. I didn’t know how to stop it and it made me feel like giving up. I turned to scripture in these dark times. These are some of the verses that helped to remind me that God is with me and He sees what is going on:

Have you ever gone through a time in your life where someone was just outright mean to you? How did you handle it? How did it make you feel? If you are walking through something like this now I would encourage you to seek shelter under the protective wing of your Heavenly Father. Let Him comfort you, then seek to forgive the offender as we are commanded to do in Colossians: 

“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Colossians 3:13

If you wrote the comments and you are reading this now, I am praying for you. You are cherished and loved by God and forgiven. God’s grace doesn’t end where your hateful acts begin, in fact His grace is exactly what covers it all as white as snow. His mercy is endless. God does love you.