The People Factor: How Building Great Relationships and Ending Bad Ones Unlocks Your God-Given Purpose (10 page)

Some of the problems you have faced in your life may be no fault of your own; they may have
nothing
to do with you and everything to do with the fact that you remind people of someone or something painful. Or maybe the issue is that you represent a difficult time in their past, a failure or a mistake that did not even involve you personally. Maybe a relationship is painful for you because of cultural, racial, or socioeconomic gaps between you and another person. Or perhaps, like me, you carry the weight of someone else’s fears that are based not on anything you have done or said, but on your connection to someone else. All these situations are unfortunate, unintentional twists on the phrase “guilt by association”
—and none of them is your fault.

S
O
W
HAT
D
O
Y
OU
D
O
?

Any time you are caught in a situation you did not create and cannot escape, you have choices to make. Sadly, Jephthah did not choose well. Scripture refers to him as “a mighty warrior” (Judg. 11:1). He does become a great military leader, and that becomes clear later in Judges 11. But the greatest battle he waged did not happen on the field of conflict; it took place inside of him.

I can only imagine what Jephthah had to fight each day,
knowing that his family never accepted him, did not approve of him, and failed to embrace him. We see no evidence that anyone took compassion on him. We see only indications of the strong negative feelings his family felt toward him. Apparently no one around him “felt his pain” or tried to understand him.

The obstacles Jephthah faced were enormous, as any kind of deep pain in any human heart is enormous. Jephthah’s fatal flaw was his failure to deal with his hurt. For the rest of his life, as you will see throughout this chapter, that ache of longing for his brothers’ love and acceptance persisted. For some reason, he never found his way to forgiveness toward them and therefore to healing for himself. Holding on to the pain and clinging desperately to his desire for good relationships with his brothers kept him trapped in his past, never fully able to thrive in his present or venture into his future.

Many people are similar to Jephthah and seem to repeatedly sabotage the relationships they desperately long for because they have suppressed the pain of past relationships. They simply do not realize that a conscious or unconscious refusal to deal with hurts from the past does indeed set up a person for failure in the future unless their pain is resolved.

This is one reason I urged you in
chapter 1
to know yourself, acknowledge your secrets in safe ways, and make a priority of getting your heart healed. There is no shame or embarrassment in seeking the help you need, but if you refuse to deal with lingering pain from your past, you will endanger your personal destiny and your future interactions with others. I have never met a person who has not sustained some kind of relational wound at some point. Those who move beyond their pain into healing, forgiveness, wholeness, and restoration typically go on to live lives of joy, strength, and impact. Those who don’t will suffer in many areas of their lives until they finally realize that their decision to remain
wounded has sabotaged potentially great relationships and jeopardized their personal destinies.

As Jephthah’s story unfolds in the rest of this chapter, I encourage you to tell yourself this truth: “It doesn’t have to be this way for me.” No matter what you have endured, God has good plans for you, plans that are well within your reach if you choose to leave your past and all its pain behind you.

L
OOK FOR
Y
OUR
B
LESSINGS IN
D
ISGUISE

How would you feel if your family hated and rejected you so terribly that you had to pack your bags and run away—and you ended up living in Alcatraz? That does
not
sound like a good move! Yet a loose comparison exists between that scenario and what really happened to Jephthah. When he was old enough, the Bible says he “fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob” (Judg. 11:3).

Tob (rhymes with
robe
) was not a desirable place to live; nothing about it was ideal. It was a haven for exiles, murderers, mercenaries, and thieves. People from other areas tended to cast aspersions on people from Tob because the land was full of roughnecks and rascals. But Tob was also a place of crucial development and destiny for Jephthah. It may not have been impressive to other people, but it was important in God’s purposes for this outcast’s life. In Tob, Jephthah got married, established a home, and began to raise a family. He also developed meaningful relationships when he connected with a group of men the Bible calls “adventurers” who gathered around him as friends and related to him as their leader. They became his band of brothers, poised and positioned to give him the camaraderie and support his biological siblings withheld.

In that unlikely place called Tob, Jephthah’s life begins to take
root and flourish, but he struggles to embrace the good things God gives him because he is so bound to his past. He cannot see that the very things he has always hungered for—the love and acceptance of his family, approval, community, a sense of belonging—have become realities in his life, because he keeps looking for them in the sources of his past.

An interesting note about Jephthah’s move to Tob is that in Hebrew, the word
Tob
actually means “good.” As an Israelite, Jephthah would have known this. To tell people he lived in Tob would have been like a modern-day person saying, “I live in Wonderful, USA” or “I live in Happy, Mexico.” Somehow, the meaning of the name escaped him. His presence in Tob was providential, but he did not know it. Perhaps he could not embrace what his location could have represented to him because he could not let go of the ideal of his family’s love. He could not fully settle into “good” because the unhealed wound in his heart still felt it could only be healed in the environment in which it was inflicted—the “bad” of his former family home.

J
UST
W
HAT
Y
OU
A
LWAYS
W
ANTED
. . .

The lesson we can learn from this part of Jephthah’s story is that if we do not trust God to lead us, we will undervalue the places He puts us. We will think of certain places and experiences as bad, when in reality they are hugely significant to our destinies; they are blessings in disguise. If we don’t trust Him and learn to view our circumstances from His perspective, we can completely miss something truly wonderful that God is doing for us. Instead we will spend our time longing for the something from our past that really isn’t His will or His best for us at all. I believe Jephthah was
so bound to his past and unable to escape the pain of it because he never received the healing his heart desperately needed. He never resolved the issues of rejection, shame, and probably anger that came from the circumstances of his birth and the cruelties of his brothers. His unhealed hurts kept his focus locked onto his past, but God had moved him away from all that and offered him a fresh start in a good place.

Sometimes God causes people or places others may regard as lowly to be the ideal environments to strengthen us, heal us, and lead us into our destinies. All we have to do is to keep our eyes on Him, not on our surroundings or circumstances. We have to choose not to continue grasping for the people and places that have repeatedly failed us and hurt us in the past and to trust completely that God knows what He is doing and is working for our good.

Whatever the pain you have suffered in your past, I promise you God wants to heal it and to lead you into a better life in the future than would have ever been possible had you stayed chained to your past. As He did when He surrounded Jephthah with friends who recognized his potential and looked to him as their leader, He will also provide you with the people or experiences that have been missing in your life for so long. The key, though, is to learn to appreciate the people who love you. They may not seem to be exactly your type. Maybe they come from a different socioeconomic background or a different racial or cultural experience, or perhaps they have not attained the same level of education or influence you have. The fact is, God knows who you need in your life. Regardless of how deeply you want their approval, people from your past who neglect you or treat you badly are not good for you.

So many people ignore the amazing blessings God places right in front of them because they look beyond those blessings in a vain effort to find something they probably will never get from people
who have hurt them all their lives. I hope that will not be the case for you. You must know that God is focused on healing and redeeming the pain of your past. I urge you not to overlook the good things He is doing in your life because you are too busy longing for or chasing relationships or experiences that are not in your best interest. I understand that the pain of the past can have a powerful pull on your present, but you may lose some wonderful relationships and opportunities that are just waiting for you today. Live and thrive among the people God gives you, in the place God has placed you.

W
HAT TO
D
O
W
HEN
Y
OUR
“B
ROTHERS
” C
OME
B
ACK

Scripture gives us reason to believe Jephthah was basically doing well in Tob. Yes, he did fight internal battles with his past, and while I believe they limited him severely, they did not incapacitate him. He was certainly able to fulfill his responsibilities, as we can see by the fact that he was considered a strong leader among his group of friends.

Then, suddenly, the elders of Gilead (Jephthah’s family) came roaring back into his life, along with all the pain they represented. They did not come back because they realized how much they had hurt Jephthah in the past; they did not come back to apologize for treating him badly; they did not return because they had matured and recognized that they may have missed knowing a good and decent person and wanted to develop a good relationship with him. They came back because they wanted what Jephthah had: courage and military leadership skills.

The nation of Israel was under attack, and obviously, the brothers had heard about Jephthah’s position with his adventurers. They
had no use or regard for him while they were growing up together, but now that everything dear to them was threatened, they needed him!

Jephthah responded, “Didn’t you hate me and drive me from my father’s house? Why do you come to me now, when you’re in trouble?” (Judg. 11:7
).

They answered, “Nevertheless, we are turning to you now; come with us to fight the Ammonites, and you will be our head over all who live in Gilead” (Judg. 11:8
).

Perhaps remembering how they had treated him in years past and wondering whether they were telling the truth now, Jephthah questioned them, basically saying, “Are you sure about this?” (Judg. 11:9). After they promised to
really
give him a position of leadership in their community, he made the disappointing and detrimental decision to go with them. He left behind the good life and the good place God had given him and went back to his place of pain. The story unfolds as one of the most heartbreaking accounts in the Bible; the results of his decision are tragic. In his desire to please the wrong people, he made a rash vow to God, promising to offer to Him whatever came out of his house first when he returned home. Tragically, when he reached his house, his young daughter came dancing out the door of their home to meet him. To keep his vow to God, he had to sacrifice the girl (Judg. 11:32–40). He abandoned quality relationships to go with people who had previously rejected him, and his choice cost him dearly.

I have seen the principles of this ancient story play themselves out in a variety of circumstances, in all kinds of relationships. I have learned from personal experience and by observation a key lesson from Jephthah’s story, which I mentioned in
chapter 1
and cannot emphasize enough:
when people show you who they are, pay attention.
Jephthah knew who his brothers really were, and early in
the conversation he questioned them, asking if they really would make him their leader. But because he had never dealt with the pain of his past relationship with them and still longed for their acceptance and approval, he ignored what he had learned through years of harsh treatment and went with them. He allowed them to use him, even though he had no reason to believe they had changed their minds about him.

I am aware that some people do change and improve over time. Some realize they have not respected or treated you well in the past. Those people apologize sincerely for what they have done to you and express genuine desire to build a healthy relationship with you in the future. People who
really
do mature and feel badly about their past attitudes and actions toward you are happy to prove their change of heart.

Anytime someone from your past comes back into your life and wants
what you have
instead of
who you are
, beware. The test of knowing what to do when your brothers come back is real and happens far too often. I remember vividly how certain people from my past once ridiculed and marginalized me. There was a time in my past when I did not have much—except dreams and goals. Certain people did not accept me and even went so as far as to tell me that my dreams would never happen and my goals were too far-fetched. I strongly desired relationships with several of these people, but in their eyes I did not fit in, so they rejected me.

I was forced to move on, and much as He did for Jephthah, God brought me to my “good” place. I am fortunate to have a great wife and family and to lead a large, thriving ministry. But what’s funny and sad is, since God has established those things in my life, many of the people who rejected me earlier in life now want to be my friends. They rejected me before, when all I had were goals and
dreams, but now that those dreams have become tangible realities, they want to reenter my life.