Choosing Your Battles

I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.

“Mom!” Natalie rushed through the front door. “Those boys were at it again!”

After her mom listened to yet another story of Natalie and her friends facing off with a group of boys in the lunchroom, she asked, “Honey, what are you fighting for? Are you sure God is asking you to fight this battle?”

Confused, Natalie paused for a long moment before saying, “We don’t like them because they are always causing trouble. Today, they were throwing food. Ugh. We are enforcing the rules.”

“Hmm. Why aren’t you allowing the lunchroom monitors to handle those boys? Maybe they need someone to be friendly toward them rather than picking a fight.”

When Natalie paused to consider, her mom asked a follow-up question: “As a girl who loves Jesus, where is he in your fight?”

These two questions led to a crucial conversation about what it means to be a young woman who strives to reflect Christ to her classmates, discerning which battles Jesus asks her to pick and which battles he might ask her to leave unfought.

That’s a tricky question, isn’t it? How do we know the answer?

Sometimes Jesus asks us to reflect the love of Christ instead of fighting. This isn’t always an easy thing to figure out, especially when our emotions are involved. The most important question to ask is: “Does this conflict honor God?” If not, perhaps this battle is not yours to fight. It’s important to remember that we are the children of God and that we have to be wise in the battles we choose to fight. Are we loving our enemies when we pick fights with them? Could we respond differently instead of fighting?

Things to Think About

• Have you been engaging in conflicts that demand your own rights or have you been defending another person’s rights?
• How can you approach conflict in ways that honor God?

DAILY ACT OF FRIENDSHIP

Ask God to show you the battles you’ve been fighting that he has not asked you to fight. Decide how to approach those conflicts with friends and classmates in a way that honors God.