Love Your Enemies? What?!

Probably one of the hardest things that Christians are commanded to do is to love our enemies. When we hear those words, our first thought is, "Um...what? Enemies are enemies for a good reason. Why would we possibly love them?"

Honesty time here, I've had a lot of people come into my life and leave because of various reasons. Friends and I have had falling outs. And the last thought that ever goes through my mind is, "I need to love them, even if they hate me, or aren't in my life anymore."

As a younger teen, one of the girls that I called my best friend at the time, hurled some pretty big and nasty insults on me. Things that a good friend should never say to you, but she said them anyways.
And forgiving her for what she did and said to me was very, very, very hard. They say, "Sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me."

That's a lie.

Words hurt. People say things that hurt worse than broken bones. Kids are bullied, hurt every day.
And we're supposed to love them? What?

Jesus tells us all about loving our enemies in the Gospel According to Matthew.

Matthew 5:43-48 says, " You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy", but I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who cruse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the sons of the Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sens rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." 

Okay, so....there's a lot to digest there.

But Jesus is pretty adamant about the whole "love your enemies" thing.

"But I say to those who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hates you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you." (Luke 6:27)

When Jesus walked the earth, he had a lot of so-called "enemies". People who didn't want to believe; people who hated him.

And like us, when our friends do things to betray us , one of Jesus' own gave him over to the officials so that he would be hung on the cross.

But did Jesus hate those people who persecuted him, or who spat on him, or loathed him?

No. No. No.


Because, somehow, he loves everyone. No matter what they do - what WE do - he loves us.

As Christians, we need to practice to be more like Jesus every day. He said himself we need to love our enemies, so whether or not we understand it, we still must do it.

I struggle with this. A lot.

There are so many people in my life that I have a hard time loving. But as I was working on this post, I came across a verse in Romans that really helped me.

"For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." (Romans 5:10)

Phew. Okay. Before we accept (or accepted) Christ as our personal Savior, we were God's enemy. But do you think that for one second that he hated us?

No!

So I urge you to pray for those people you don't like so much. If they're not Christians, especially pray that they will find the Lord.

But just pray for them.

You may never be friends with you those people that you call "enemies", but you don't have to hate them.
We'll work through this together. I'm just as much at fault of this as anyone else.

C'mon girls! Let's pray for our enemies.

Together - and with God's help - we'll make it through.

~Ashley

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