"But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, Matthew 5:44 (Jesus speaking)
How do we pray for someone who makes us mad, or someone whom we do not like? When everytime we start to pray we think of the person and get angry? We don't enjoy being around the person, at all, but have to be and we want to obey Jesus in the above verse but find it exteremely difficult. How do we learn to work around our emotions and just pray?
First of all our desire to pray for those who we do not like, who have hurt us or who are difficult is an admirable one. Many, Many relatively mature Christians cannot seem to do this. It is one of the toughest things Jesus calls us to obey but we are called to pray for those who persecute and despitefully use us. I believe the best thing to do about this is to STOP asking ourselves how we feel and instead just act in obedience having faith God will give us the words to pray for them. When it comes to things that God has clearly commanded us to do we would be far better off to make a commitment to act in faith and obedience and stop allowing our feeling to tell us what to do. We do not trust in feelings but in what God's Word says is true. Our feelings will lie to us and Satan will use them against us to deceive us. No, we should not become unfeeling people but our feels must not rule us we must rule over them. This is much easier to talk about than do but we must never give up in our attempt to mature in this area -- for it is vital to our Christian Maturity and Usefulness in the Kingdom of God.
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