Some people are negative irritants.  Others are positive irritants.  Negatively irritating people destroy, tear down, choke, undercut, and minimize your faith.  Positively irritating people build up, encourage, breathe life, strengthen, and maximize your faith.  Irritation is not always a bad thing; God often uses it for good.   A fleck of dust lodges itself inside your eyelid.  The irritation produces tears that wash the dust away, so that you can see clearly.  A splinter lodges itself in your hand.  The irritation notifies your brain that something in your hand does not belong there.  A grain of sand in the muscle of a clam has the potential of becoming a beautiful pearl.  Often God uses our Christian relationships to irritate our spiritual lives and notify us that something in us needs changing and transforming.
          Hebrews 10:23-25 (NIV) says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”  The term “spur” literally means “to irritate.”  Jesus-followers are to be committed to relationships that are positively irritating.  We need to be “bugged” and “annoyed” toward “love and good deeds.   One would think we do not need God sending any pushy, irritating people around us to get us to love rightly and practice good deeds in our lives.  I suspect, however, that we actually do need to irritated and spurred on to love and practice good deeds.  Love and good deeds do not regularly and naturally occur in our lives.  Selfish ambition and ill-motivated deeds become the lifestyle default for us if we are not huddled up with some positively irritating Jesus-followers.
          Let’s be honest.  There are some things we never would do if someone didn’t irritate us.  If mom hadn’t bugged us about brushing our teeth, we wouldn’t have the beautiful pearly whites we have today.  If our first grade teacher hadn’t irritated us by forcing us to learn the alphabet, put the words together in a right pattern, and sound them out, we wouldn’t be able to read!  God uses people to positively irritate us to move us out of our comfort zone.  As we move forward step by step in our Jesus-walk, God will send people to positively irritate us.  He is not trying to hurt us.  He is transforming our character so that it will bring glory and honor to His majestic and powerful name. 
          I urge you to commit to share your life together with a small group of believers.  We all need help tackling the difficulties of life together.  Each of us experiences growing pains during different stages of life.  Your spiritual huddle can encourage you and inspire you to stay faithful to Jesus in the midst of your pain.  We need help resolving problems with people in our homes, work, and school.  People problems can be a difficult mazes to walk through alone, and there are other Jesus-followers who have experienced the power of Christ and made it through the maze!  They can help you, but not if you refuse to huddle up and stay on the sidelines.  All of us will experience some kind of unexpected tragedy in life that will rip the carpet from underneath our feet.  When the tragedy comes, your world will change.  Your life will never be the same, and you’ll have to make adjustments.  You need a spiritual family who can encourage you, pray for you, and help you see the Light of Jesus at the end of the tunnel.  Most of all, you and I need one another in relationships in order to learn from each other how to live victoriously over our fallen, depraved, sinful nature.  If we insulate ourselves from confronting the sinfulness in our lives in relationships with other Christ-followers, than positively irritable people will be the least of our problems.

Category : Tommy Talk