Once there were two women, next door neighbors, who were on pretty good terms. One was a Christian and the other was not, but still they got on decently enough. This lasted for several years, until one day the Christian woman noticed that her friend was becoming irritable and easily annoyed. This increased over a period of several months, and she began to worry about it, so much so that she and her husband asked their pastor about it. “I must have done something wrong, something to offend her,” the woman said.
The pastor laughed. “No, it sounds to me like the opposite problem. The problem is that you haven’t offended her. You haven’t driven her away.”
“What?” they both said.
“When you are fishing, the fish does most of its thrashing right before it is hauled into the boat.”
“You are going to have to help us more than that. What do you mean? That seems really cryptic,” the woman said.
“Your friend is finally getting convicted. This is not the result of you doing something wrong. It is because you have been doing something right, and it has finally dawned on her that she is being attracted to the faith.”
“You really think that?”
“Yes. Tell me, in the last several months, has she said anything like, ‘I’ll never become a Christian’”?
“Well, yes, actually. She has.”
“Don’t take her brave profession at face value. What that should tell you is that the idea has occurred to her. She has been thinking about it, in spite of herself. She is saying that to get you to back off, to stop doing whatever it is you have been doing.”
“But I haven’t been doing anything different. I have just been her friend.”
“She sees the difference between the two of you, as much as you do, and possibly more. In recent months, it has begun to sink in on her that she might be converted.”
“Really?”
“Yes. She has already said ‘I’ll never become a Christian.’ The next thing to look for is, ‘If I became a Christian, I would have to do this or that . . .’ That is a step closer. The last step is something like, ‘When I become a Christian.’”
“You really think this?”
“Certainly. People don’t get happier and happier until finally they are so happy they decide to become Christians. They become increasingly miserable, and they start to blame the person who makes them feel miserable—in this case, that would be you.”
“But,” the woman said, “I have been praying and praying that God would reveal to me some sin or offensive behavior on my part so I could apologize to her and make it right.”
The pastor cocked an eyebrow and looked over at her husband. “What are the chances,” he asked, “that this tension is the result of your wife having been rude or obnoxious to her friend?”
Her husband laughed. “I take your point,” he said.