Don’t Pick Up the Stick

My ears prick up at the sound of raised voices in the other room. I enter the conversation in time to hear one of my sons say to his brother, “Fine! Then you can’t play with MY toy!” It’s clear to me that both boys are hot and bothered, and I separate the two. When I ask my son why he won’t share his toy with his brother, he says, “But Mommy, he started it! He said I couldn’t play with his toy first!”

I do my best to gently remind him that he is not responsible for his brother’s actions, but he is responsible for his own. He has a job to be faithful to what God has called him to do – to treat his brother with kindness even when it’s hard.

This is a summary of probably 1,357 conversations that I’ve had with my children. No matter how many times it happens, it smarts when someone treats us unkindly and it is hard to be faithful to what God has called us to do in the face of that unkindness.

My husband and I have been hurt and blindsided by people in ministry, and at times, those people don’t apologize or work with us towards reconciliation. If you’re reading this as a pastor’s wife, I can only assume you can relate to this. We have had to grapple with questions like, “How do we faithfully serve people who have hurt us and continue to hurt us? How do we work alongside people who haven’t apologized or changed their behavior? What does faithfulness in ministry look like in these situations?”

During a difficult time for us grappling with these questions, a pastor friend of my husband’s read 2 Timothy 2:22-26 to him. It says:

So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

After reading this passage to my husband, his friend compared it to a person poking you with a stick, trying to goad you into picking up a stick to fight back. His words of encouragement to my husband were, “Don’t pick up the stick.” 

What does that look like?

Paul tells Timothy to “have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.” How easy is it for us to get sucked into a foolish or petty conflict? Sometimes I have to remind my children that what they are arguing about just isn’t worth it – they both believe they’re right, but in the end, they’re both wrong because of how they’re treating each other. Do I do the same thing? Do I let being right cloud my judgment and take part in foolish conflicts?

According to Paul, the Lord’s servant must: not be quarrelsome, be kind to everyone, be able to teach, patiently endure evil, and correct his opponents with gentleness. 

Okay, did anyone else just go, “Are you kidding me???” Please tell me yes, because that’s exactly what I did when my husband shared this passage with me. This is really hard stuff! According to Paul, being faithful in ministry means we have to “be kind to everyone.” EVERYONE. Not just the people we like, or the people who are nice to us. This means we have to be kind to the people who poke at us (or even hit us) with sticks. 

Paul says we are to “patiently endure evil.” There are times when what we are going through in ministry is evil, plain and simple. Among the seven things God hates from Proverbs 6:16-19, we see “haughty eyes” which is pride, “a lying tongue,” “a heart that devises wicked plans,” and “one who sows discord among brothers.” I’m willing to bet we have all had to deal with one or more of these at some point in our time of ministry – and Paul says we are to endure evil with patience.

The servant of the Lord is called to “be able to teach.” Sometimes, people don’t even know that what they’re doing is wrong. They may be blind to their blindness! It’s our job to teach them in those situations. If we can rescue a brother or sister who isn’t even aware of their own sin or their part in foolishness, what a way to be faithful to God through our ministry!

Paul also tells Timothy to “correct his opponents with gentleness.” It’s easy to forget the second half of this – with GENTLENESS. We are called to correct opponents, which is never easy, but we are also called to do it with gentleness. This way, we aren’t contributing to the foolish controversies, encouraging things to get out of hand. We’re being like Christ – extending grace and kindness even though it isn’t deserved.

We know that it is God’s kindness which leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4), so why should it be any different with us? Getting hot and bothered and losing our temper about how others have done us wrong isn’t what leads them to repentance. Being kind to them, loving them faithfully, teaching, correcting in gentleness; these are the ways we can be used by God to lead them to repentance. Also, it is God who leads men to repentance, not us. That repentance isn’t guaranteed, but (just like I told my son) we are still responsible to do our part.

Possibly the hardest part of this passage for me to swallow is that last sentence, “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” The only promise here is that perhaps God may lead them to repentance, and they may come to their senses. What??? Let’s recap: we need to be kind, teach, endure patiently, and correct gently, and we don’t even have any guarantee that the person on the other end will ever change! 

This is where I get more discouraged than I was before, until I remember Paul’s words in Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ,” and his words in Galatians 6:9, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

This is the part where I realize the beauty and the freedom of it all – if I was guaranteed that doing a, b, and c would cause people to repent, then I would be doing it for the wrong reasons. I’d be doing it to manipulate the situation and get the results I want. The beauty of what God has set up in His Word is that we aren’t able to cause heart change and we are called to be faithful in ministry because we are called to be faithful to Him. We are faithful to treat people this way because it is an overflow of God’s love in us flowing from us to others.

The reward isn’t forcing people to change, or gaining the approval of those who poke at us with sticks. We will reap our reward in due season if we are faithful to doing good, and we do good because we love our God, Who is the perfect example of faithfulness. So let’s be faithful. Don’t pick up the stick.