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| Share Agape for the week of September 29, 2003 |
| The Right Thing To Do "'You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven�If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" Matthew 5: 43-47 As I sat down to write this week's Bible study, I found that it directly applied to the details of my life at the moment. I won't go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that I was personally struggling with the topic at hand. Yet, as I send off this week's Bible study, I find I'm living proof of just how effective God's plan for dealing with our "enemies" is. Praying for your enemies is not natural. Loving those who go out of their way to make your life miserable is not natural. Yet Jesus tells us to do both. If this section of the Bible seems just too far beyond the realm of reality, it might help to define a few terms. Many of us don't feel like we have enemies. To us, enemies are Nazis during WWII, or the obviously evil antagonist in a movie. But the word Christ originally used translates to mean something more like "someone we have differences with," "adversary," or "foe." In the original Greek, the "enemies" in question hate us or "detest, abhor," or misuse us. All of us, no matter how kind we might be, has had someone behave this way toward us. Let's also look at the word love, as in "love your enemies." The command sounds like an oxymoron: How can you love an enemy? But Jesus isn't talking about sentimental or emotional love. He's talking about agapao, the kind of love that's created. It means serving others even when you don't want to. It means treating them kindly, even if you believe they don't deserve it. It means being the wiser, stronger individual in the room. (And without pride�humbleness is important, too.) But why should we even bother? I mean, we're supposed to hate our enemies, right? Well, first of all, Jesus commands us to pray for and love our enemies. "Great is your reward," Christ said, when we pray for and agapao our enemies. In other words, "If you honor me enough to do this, even though it will be very difficult, I'll reward you. And that's a promise you can count on." Our natural reaction when someone mistreats us is to develop hate for them, but the Bible tells us that hate never comes from God. It comes from Satan. "Do not be overcome with evil," Romans 12:21 says, "but overcome evil with good." On the other hand, you can't just make a mental decision to love your enemy. It won't work. You can only love him with God's help. And the first step toward loving your enemy is praying for him. At first, your whole mind and body may rebel against the idea of getting on your knees and praying for the "creep" that makes your life miserable. If you're anything like me, when you try to pray for your enemy, you'll start by praying for yourself. ("Dear Lord, please make so-and-so stop being such a jerk to me�") But you'll have to go beyond that. Admit to God that you don't want to pray for your enemy. (He knows it, anyway, but telling him about it frees up your heart and mind to go on to better things.) Tell God you're having a hard time praying for your enemy, but that you want to follow his commands. Ask him to help you forgive your enemy, and to develop compassion, mercy, love, and patience with him. Then ask God to meet your enemy's needs. (You probably don't know what they are, but God does!) It works. Really, it does. Continue to pray for your enemy and they may change. Better yet, you will change. That's the amazing thing about this command from Jesus. It benefits us as much as it does our enemies. (Perhaps more so.) By praying for our enemies and asking God to help us love them, we're doing ourselves a favor! It's not your first reaction to pray for those who hurt you? That's okay. In fact, that's normal. As I was writing this Bible study, I was curious to see what a search of the Internet would produce when I typed in the words "pray" and "enemy." The following example was typical: "Boost your self-esteem by destroying your enemies." In fact, when Jesus originally told us to pray for and love our enemies, many of the people he spoke to hated MORE ~~~> |
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