How to Catch a Monkey

An old tale based in Africa is a lesson in practical wisdom. Place peanuts into a hollowed-out gourd and leave it in a tree and watch. Soon a monkey will come by and smell the nuts and reach into the gourd. His fist closed around the nuts is bigger than the hole in the gourd. He has the choice to open his fist and drop the nuts onside or stay trapped, holding tight to the nuts he can’t remove. 

Dr. Jeffress, FBC, used this tale to demonstrate the choices of response when someone offends us. Reply angrily or return an offense to our offender (which puts you at the same moral level as him into an unforgiven sinner) or to remember His grace given to you and others who have done or said good things (which you may not have fully earned) and walk away remembering God said “Vengeance is Mine” and thank Him instead for all the times He Has forgiven your trespasses.

Exchanging insults or resentments will take you farther from your walk with your God, raises a barrier making it difficult for you to come freely to your Lord.  Bitterness is louder in your heart than the urge to talk to your Father. Your heart is engaged fully with the hurt you received; you have become a bondservant—a slave—to your offender. Your behavior is in his control.

 Or you can open your fist, release the hurt for God to handle and maintain that sweet fellowship with our Lord. Perhaps your offender was a fellow Christian having a bad day, causing his anger and your treatment may remind him to take his anger to the Lord to handle,  and renew his strength and relationship. Perhaps your offender does not know or to follow God’s teaching; he may continue inflicting his misery on you and/or others, but he will not go unchallenged; judgment will follow in God’s timing, the promise of heaping coals of fire upon his head

A New Testament example tells of a slave who owed his master more than he could never live long enough to repay and begged for more time and it was granted, though the king knew he would never be able to repay. Yet the slave went out to another who owed him a tiny bit of money and threatened him with prison unless he paid. When the king heard, he pointed out that the ungrateful wretch, who had been forgiven so much, had failed to forgive another so little, and condemned the ungrateful slave to prison.

Refusal to engage your enemy refrains from disturbing your status as a Child of our King and gives the offender a grace-filled span of time to change before his judgment day arrives. Will you choose to behave as a child of the King or as a monkey?

 

               If you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. but if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
–Matthew 6:14-15


            And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28