A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a small post about WWJD (here) where I talk about discouragement. This week, I’m going to throw out a tough question and then ask you what you would do and what you think Jesus would do. Tomorrow I will share a similar situation and how I handled it.
I was watching a movie recently where one of the characters had a drug addiction. Apparently the drug addict had tried to get clean before but then he relapsed. He was living with his sister at that time and the drug dealers decided to pay him a little visit because he owed them some money.
The sister then kicked her brother to the street because he started putting her family in danger and she couldn’t do that to her child.
While living on the streets, the addict had been clean for a few months and was really making strides to turn his life around. He got a job at a fast food restaurant, bought some new clothes, and got his own apartment.
After working so hard to turn his life around, he went to visit his little niece on her birthday and give her a present that he had saved up all of his money to buy. When he knocked on the door to his sister’s house, his sister and her husband opened the door and immediately shunned him away. No matter how hard he pleaded that he was clean and really trying to do the right thing, they could not put their child at risk again. So they sent him away.
As the story continued, the addict was devastated that he couldn’t see his niece anymore and turned to the only comfort that he knew, drugs. Since he had spent all of his money on the gift for his niece, he didn’t have any to pay the dealer. He continued to get himself into more and more trouble until finally the dealer killed him.
So this goes back to my claim from a couple of weeks ago, that the majority of people will make a decision based on what is best for their children. So I want you to put yourself in the shoes of the sister/brother-in-law. What would you have done in this situation? To repeat the verse I referred to on Monday,
Luke 17:3-4 NIV
“If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
After reading that, what do you think Jesus would have done in that situation?