There are some relationships where it becomes necessary to create distance in the relationship, no longer listening to someone’s comments, and allowing their misunderstanding to affect us.
Creating that distance will open the door for the Spirit to begin to work on another person’s heart. The distance will also become a place where we will get to examine the condition of our hearts, keeping them aligned with God’s redemptive heart and not using the time of a separation as a place to harden our own hearts.
Paul wrote about these kinds of relationships where people are creating division among fellow believers, “Watch out for people who cause divisions and upset people’s faith.” In the same verse, Paul took it even further and said, “Stay away from them” (Romans 16:17).
Distancing ourselves from divisive people is giving them over to the Spirit, where we have intentionally created a distance in our relationship until the Spirit completes His work in their discordant lives. In the distancing is where the Lord God can intervene in a divisive person’s life and produce positive outcomes that no amount of debate, argument, and confrontation could ever accomplish.
Walking through some of this now. It’s been hard, but what the Lord is doing to my heart through it, as well as the heart of others, is amazing and so worth it. Building my faith on the Lord, that He knows what is necessary more than I do. What’s built on Him will remain solid.