I am working on getting back on track with my blog post schedule. For a bit, I needed to put my full attention on my family and home. Now I am ready to add the blog back into my life more regularly. I have missed writing the verse of the week post, I love looking into the Bible and sharing God’s word. Since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner (two days to be exact), the topic of Love came to mind. But this verse isn’t the typical way we think of love.
Last night, my daughter and I were sitting on the couch. The Super Bowl was on in the background and I was half watching, not totally invested in the game. My daughter then asks me “Mom, does God really want us to love people we don’t like?” This makes my heart happy because sometimes I think she isn’t paying attention during the church service, hearing this I know she is listening. So I gave her the short answer, Yes, because I know my daughter and she will demand more of the conversation. And just as I suspected she continued the conversation by naming some political figures and other famous people that she doesn’t “like” based on their behavior.
We’ve often told her about treating others the way you want to be treated, but I think this often gets perceived as treating people you like or love the way you want to be treated. I am fairly certain we leave out those we don’t like out of this. Most often when we read or reference The Beatitudes we tend to look at Matthew chapter 5 but Luke in chapter 6 has a bit more instruction on the matter of loving our “enemies” or in a child’s vocabulary people we don’t like.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies (Luke 6:27)
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. (Luke 6:32)
Ooo…that second verse there…ouch! The Bible tells us we are to be set apart from the world. We are to be different. We are to shine the love of Jesus in our life. Well, I know I definitely struggle with these things at times because the world tries to train us differently. The human instinct is very self-centered and self-pleasing. But Jesus is everything we are not and it is through not only his example but His grace that we can work to be more like him.
I have to admit with all that is going on in the world, with so many against Chrisitanity and our values it is hard to be loving. It is not a natural instinct. It is easy to love those who love me and that gives relationship gives back. Leave it to kids to open our eyes and hearts to some difficult matters, right?
So in my conversation with our daughter, we talked about praying for others. Praying that they would find Jesus and He would fill their hearts and life. In reality, hate can overtake you. It is a powerful emotion and action that can ruin you. We’ve always tried to tell our kids that hate is a really powerful word and emotion because it has very negative consequences. Many times when we talk about loving our enemies, others will try and justify their actions by saying “Well doesn’t the Bible say ‘an eye for eye’ (Exodus 21:24). But this is again taking the word of God to fit our lives or agenda. In the Old Testament, this was a measurement in judicial law for punishment, punishments were not to exceed the crime. For some reason, over time we took this verse as our personal mission on how we treat others. When Jesus came his teachings were revolutionary because He took the teachings of the Old Testament that had been twisted to benefit man and brought them back to glorifying God.
Yes, it is hard to love our enemies. It is a struggle but if we are to fully accept Jesus in our lives, we have to accept His ways and teachings. We have to embrace the hard things but we also don’t do that alone, we have Jesus with us. It is my hope that our children, the future generation of God’s people can again embrace these words and help bring more people to Jesus through this action.
The Life We Build 