Devotionals

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There are three types of people I usually try to avoid: I call them Haters, Vampires, and Drifters. Haters never have anything nice or positive to say, instead they try their best to tear others down just to make themselves feel better. Vampires drain you of mental, spiritual, or emotional energy. They tend to be negative, emotionally needy, and unreasonably demanding of attention, sucking you into their dismal and bleak world through their clingy self-absorption. Drifters are those that lack any semblance of life ambitions. They don’t feel the need to achieve more in life when it comes to intellectual, cultural, spiritual or professional pursuits and spend much of their time doing nothing, trying to bring you down to their limited level of understanding. Conversation and interaction with Drifters is often tiresome, pointless, and un-fulfilling.

While all of these types of people are hard to deal with, I still believe that they need love as much as anyone. It’s usually insecurity and other psychological issues that drive these types to extreme unpleasantness. Unfortunately, most of the time my empathetic feelings lead to regret and disappointment, especially when my efforts to help lack success. I still have to remind myself to turn them over to God, so to speak,and pray that He heals them because once someone is far gone enough, He is the only one that can. If He wants to work through me, great, that means it is even further out of my hands. God is God, He doesn’t need me getting in His way with my own ideas of how to fix someone.

No matter how much others might desire to get through to a hater, vampire, or drifter, unless that person is willing to acknowledge their problem and ask for help themselves, no one’s assistance will get very far. More often than not, the hater, vampire, or drifter will succeed at making the helper feel terrible at best or sink them down to their level at worst.

A trite phrase that applies: ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.’
God says: “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Proverbs 13:20
“Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.” Proverbs 22:24-25

Bottom line: Let go of that toxic individual and leave it up to God, the Ultimate Healer. As humans we have limited to zero control over the actions of others, but what we CAN control is how we behave ourselves. Do not get sucked into their negative behavior. Walk away!

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