We had two soccer games this past weekend. La Petite Belle was in full force.

She scored two goals in Sunday’s game and led her team to victory. But, the game on Saturday didn’t have such good results. They lost … 3-1.
There seemed to be a LOT of pushing on the part of the other team … the other older team (U-12 … La Petite Belle’s team is U-11). So much pushing that at one point I just screamed out “Stop pushing!” Guess who was on the other end of most of the pushing? Yep. La Petite Belle. She was pushed quite a bit. She even spent some time on the ground.
After the game she said, “I think they had it out for me.” (Me too.)

La Petite Belle started to become visibly irritated that the coach was not calling the other girls on the pushing. So … what do your do? 
Well … she just pushed back.
This was not the right thing to do.
However, the coach, after the game, said that if the ref is not going to enforce these rules then La Petite Belle did the right thing by pushing back.
Which leads me to the question: At one point do you not turn the other cheek?
That’s what the Bible teaches us. That’s the harder thing to do. The easier and most fulfilling thing is to definitely push back.
Is there ever a point where we should push back? You hurt me so many times, I hurt you back?

Really, pushing back is just self-defense. We do the same thing in our relationships.

And, that is the harder part because our flesh wants it. We want to push back. Push back so much that we are far away from anyone who can hurt us.
Every single time we’re pushed … Every. Single. Time. … we are commanded NOT to push back.

Really not pushing back makes us the stronger person. It takes real strength to turn the other cheek when someone has offended or hurt you.

It takes real strength to lay it all down at Jesus’ feet and trust Him to handle the situation and not take it into our own hands.

I’m trying, ya’ll. I’m really trying to be that kind of strong.