Dealing With The Enemy

I was reading my Bible this morning and came across some verses that seemed to just jump out at me. They made me think of all we've been going through with our one set of neighbors. First I'll tell you just a little bit about our neighbors. We've lived here for about 5 1/2 years now, and we've had trouble with these people almost from day one. We park our cars perpendicular to our house. Our neighbor parks his car parallel to his house. For some reason, our neighbor seems to think he has to drive onto our property, back up, come back onto our property, and back up again in order to park his car. There are many times he comes within INCHES of hitting my car. We've seen other people pull into that spot without touching our property, so why does he feel the need to do it EVERY TIME he comes home? Our answer: he's just being a jerk. Sorry, but there just isn't a better way to say it.

At first, we tried to just ignore the whole thing. Then one afternoon, I had just finished buckling our daughter into her carseat in my car (she was 3 years old at the time) and I got into the car myself. I hadn't even closed the door yet when I was startled to see our neighbor come flying in and stop within inches of my car. I realized immediately that if he had shown up just seconds earlier or if I had taken a few seconds longer, he would have hit me or possibly even our daughter. I could feel the anger welling up within in me, but I said nothing to him. When I told my husband what happened, he was furious! We felt like we now had to teach our daughter to look both ways before you go out the front door! One evening I was at worship team rehearsal at church and our neighbor came home. Since my car wasn't there, he decided he could then drive his entire car onto our property and come within inches of my husband's car! He drove forward and backwards numerous times, for no reason other than he knows it aggrevates my husband and wanted to get him mad. Well, it worked! My husband was upstairs and he opened the window and yelled at our neighbor to stay off of our property. The neighbor responded by threatening my husband that he was going to come up there and throw him out the window!!

We have put up with this neighbor using a snowblower and blowing ALL of his snow onto our property EVERY winter, stealing a No Tresspassing sign my husband put up in an effort to keep him from driving onto our property, cursing at us and yelling that they wish we would be dead when we came home one night (which my daughter heard them say and caused her to burst into tears), constantly antagonizing my husband to come fight him in the street, screaming at my husband and kids to "walk in the middle of the street" because they are "too close" to his car (there are no sidewalks on our street and we are not about to tell our kids to walk down the middle of the street!), and many other things! This guy even issued a false statement to the police about how my husband "drove recklessly and almost hit him with his car while he was stuck on ice". What actually happened was the neighbor sped through a field and then went onto the road in order to cut my husband off. He then drove really slow until he finally SLAMMED on his brakes. My husband was aware that the guy was up to something so he was driving slow enough that he was able to stop in time and avoided hitting him. The guy then got out of the car and told my husband to "get out!". My husband said no and then drove around the guy's car when he got back in his car. There was NO ice at all that day, yet the neighbor got away with issuing that statement without the police ever coming to get my husband's side of the story! The charges were later dropped when my dad, who just happens to be a police officer himself (but our neighbor doesn't know that), called the police officer in town who filed the charges and told him exactly what was going on and pointed out that charges should NOT have been filed since NO ONE witnessed the incident and it was simply the word of a man who has been harrassing my husband for YEARS now. I love my dad!! LOL!

The police in town are fully aware of the trouble we are having with this neighbor, but they do nothing about it. My husband has issued complaints with the police about our neighbor a few times and yet the police keep telling us there is nothing we can do because it is a civil matter. My husband was even told one time by a certain officer that if he issued one more complaint against our neighbor, they were going to arrest BOTH of them (my husband and the neighbor) and have the courts settle it. Last summer one police officer admitted to my husband that we have "the neighbors from hell". We have STRONG suspicions, as do others in town that have talked to us about it, that our neighbors are drug dealers. The only thing we can figure is that the police don't bother with our neighbor because he is a volunteer firefighter in town. Aren't police suppose to PROTECT the civilians instead of allowing one of them to get away with doing whatever he wants just because he is a volunteer firefighter?! Sigh. We obviously try to not get sucked into our neighbor's constant attacks against us and we just try to avoid having any contact at all with him. We have been wanting to move for a long time, but we simply don't have the finances to do that. The past few days my husband has just been really frustrated with the whole situation and feels that God hasn't answered our prayers and this neighbor just continues to "win".

I've tried telling my husband that this is truly a spiritual battle we are having with this neighbor. It is obvious this guy is not a Christian! When we first moved here, his car had a big face of the devil on the back window and a smaller face on the side of his car. I sensed early on that this guy didn't hate "us" per se, but he hated CHRIST who is IN US! I told my husband that we can't expect this guy to act "like a Christian" when he isn't one. It is easy to think that this guy should have been taught right from wrong and at least know how to act civil, but we knew this neighbor's dad (yes, the guy is in his 30s or 40s and still living at home. His dad died last year.) and he was just as mean, nasty, and rude to my husband as his son. I guess the saying "like father like son" is true!

So getting back to what this was all about in the first place (sorry, guess I just wrote another LONG blog), I read Proverbs 24 today. I noticed I had one verse underlined already, verse 10. That verse says "If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength!" I read that and thought of my husband and how he is feeling right now. I figured I should save that verse and let him read it because maybe he needs to be reminded that God WILL give him the strength he needs to continue to deal with our neighbor and he shouldn't feel abandoned. Then I continued reading and was convicted by Proverbs 24: 17-20 "Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him. Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of the wicked, for the evil man has no future hope, and the lamp of the wicked will be snuffed out.". OUCH! We really haven't seen the neighbor "fall", but I was reminded of some times when we thought it was funny that he was having so much troubles with his cars and almost felt like he deserved it for all he had done to us. It's almost like we felt like saying "HA! That's what you get for messing with a Christian!"

It's easy to pray a sort of "get him God!" prayer when you are faced with people like this. We NEED to pray for them, but it needs to be one of asking God to get ahold of that person's heart so they can see Him and come to know Him. We can ask for God's protection against any harm this person may want to bring against us, but we also should be praying for us to be Godly examples to them. Those are hard prayers to pray when all you really want is to get away from this person (for us we want to either move or have this guy get arrested and spend a LONG time in jail)! I realize we haven't always been a good example of God's love to this guy and maybe that's one reason why we are still here.

I'm not saying that my husband has been wrong when he yelled at this guy because the guy was endangering the safety of our family. I realize our attitudes toward this guy haven't always been pleasing to God, and we need to make sure we work on that so that our kids learn the right thing to do when they are faced with people who are hard to love. I want them to know they can fully trust God to help them each step of the way. It doesn't matter what happens, God is always there and He will give them the strength to handle it in a Godly way. When you know you may have to face an enemy, pray each morning for God to help you if a situation with the enemy arises. Sometimes you may need to walk away from the situation and not say anything at the time, especially if you are really angry at the time. It may mean saying a silent prayer for God to give you the wisdom to know what to say before you open your mouth. The important thing to do is not to lose faith when it seems the enemy is always "winning". As Christians, we are promised the ultimate victory! Keep your eyes on the prize!