daily java

Daily Java:

Don’t be intimidated in any way by your enemies. This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved, even by God himself. (Philippians 1:28)

There is a big deal now about bullying. There are all kinds of ads telling you to not bully and to not encourage bullying. For the most part, they are stupid.

Bullying is not something you deal with rationally. It is something you deal with on other levels. And above all, a person is bullied if they want to be bullied. A bully cannot intimidate you unless you allow him to do so.

My son had problems with bullies in junior high. He was a suburban Houston boy thrust into a rural farm community. The kids were different than he was. For one thing, they were a lot more physical. My son was not. He was basically a sensitive, shy kid.

They were beating him up and the like. Finally I got tired of it and enrolled him to karate classes. I told him that it was not so that he could stand up to the bullies and threaten to hurt them. It was so that he could gain confidence. If there is one person bullies do not bother, it is confident people.

I have not had problems with bullies since mid high school. It was at that point that I got both size and confidence. For some reason, even though I didn’t necessarily set out to do so, I got confidence. Although I was not necessarily a physical person, I looked like one. So bullies left me alone.

I wanted the same for my son. As he worked on his karate, little by little he gained confidence. And it showed in the way he presented himself. After one of the kids from his school saw him going into his karate school dojo, they decided he wasn’t worth the possible embarrassment of being beaten up. So they left him alone.

Bullies look for people who are ill at ease, or not strong. They prey on those people. The Christian should be the kind of person that people will not bother with. After all, as one friend said to me, what are they going to do? Threaten him with heaven?

There is a confidence that should be in a Christian that says to people that you cannot hurt him. Jesus himself said it in Matthew 10 when he said to not fear them who can destroy your body, but rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

In other words, if you are going to be afraid, be afraid of real scary people. God is scary if you get to thinking about it. People are not. Sure, they may hurt you and even kill you. But there is a strength in the Christian that says that they will continue no matter what the problems.

A Christian doesn’t wait for the government to pass laws telling those outside the body of Christ that they cannot hurt those inside the body of Christ. The Christian relies on the power of God.

That power doesn’t mean that everybody is going to fall before him. But it does mean that no matter what else may happen, God is still in control.

People will try to bully Christians because they mistakenly view them as weak, but they are not. They have the power of God within them. and, if they truly rely on God, they have a strength within them that is beyond the power of the world to understand.

Bullies are stupid. They think they can get what they want by brute force or by intimidation. But the apostle Paul says don’t worry about them. They will ultimately be destroyed. And no matter what they do to you, you will be rewarded.

One of the inmates at the jail where I go on Thursday nights told me the other day that I radiate calm. I suppose that what he saw was Christianity coming through me. he saw the power of God in my life and he saw that I was not going to be afraid of a bunch of people wearing striped clothing.

Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world, Jesus said. And he meant it.

Bullies are going to be with us no matter what the government may pretend to do. But the Christian doesn’t have to worry about it. He has the God of the Universe on his side.