You Need to Love Your Enemies

Verses:  Matthew 5:43-48

My thoughts about the verses:

It is easy to love your friends and family.  It is easy to be kind to those that are kind to you.  It is easy to show respect to those that respect us.  It is easy to want good things to those that show us love.

At the same time it is hard to love people that hurt us.  It is hard to be kind to those that stand up against us.  It is hard to respect people that do not respect us.  It is easy to wish bad things to happen to our enemies.

Yet, Jesus calls us to love our enemies.  One of the hardest things that Jesus tells us to do is be kind to those that hurt us.  It is hard to accept that God brings good to those that stand up against us.  Loving our enemies is foreign concepts to people that are not Christians.  Loving our enemies is also a hard concept for Christians to do.

We need to accept that loving our enemies is something that we must do.  People that we consider our enemies need to be forgiven by us.  We need to show all of our neighbors love.  Imagine what would have happened in our life if the person that told us about Christ didn’t love us because of who we were.  We need to remember that the only way our neighbors can love God is seeing love in us.

We need to walk through life loving our neighbors.  We need to remember that God does not want us to pick and choose who we love.  We are to love all people so that they can see Jesus in us.  We need to remember that if we are Christians many of our enemies have not accepted Jesus in their life.

Now here is where it gets touchy.  What do we do when people who are Christians become our enemies?  We have to remember that they are children of God just like we are.  We have to show them love.  We do not have to agree with them.  Yet, what we need to do is ask Jesus to intervene in the situation.  Therefor we need to realize when we show brotherly and sisterly love to those that are against us we are taking one step closer to changing the relationship.

We need to always need to remember that God’s love is for all.  Since God’s love is for all we need to show that same love.  We need to turn away from our hate to people and turn to love.  It doesn’t matter what the other person does.  What is important is what we do to others.  We need to show love and let God handle the rest.

Prayer:

We thank you for your love.  We praise you for loving us when we didn’t deserve it.  Help us accept the calling to love all people.  Help us be the people that always show Christian love no matter what.  In the name of the Peacemaker we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Do you show love to those that are your enemies?  Do you accept the calling of God to ask for blessings even for those that are against us?  Are we willing to love those that dislike us?  Are we willing to change so that we can love those that do not return love?  Can we learn to respect those that do not respect us?  Are we willing today to love others with brotherly or sisterly love no matter what the situation is?