Matthew 5:43-44 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

Just when you thought the bar was already too high with forgiving your enemies, Jesus raises it just a little more by telling us we not only are to “love” our enemies, but we are to “pray” for them! How in the world can we possibly be expected to do that? Love people who have wronged us? Pray for them? We can’t do that! Well, yes and no. We as human beings do not have the capacity to love like that. Only God, through his Son Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit has the ability to love unconditionally. Without conditions. No matter what. If you are a child of God, the ability resides in you as well, unused or unpracticed though it might be. In order to tap into the wellspring of love that flows to us through our Savior, we must first get past our ego, our bitterness and our resentment. We must stop thinking about what they did “to us” and start thinking about what Christ could do for them…the same thing that he did for us. They need to see his love from us – only then will they believe the love of Christ is a real thing.

Pray: “Lord Jesus, sometimes I think you expect too much from me. And sometimes I hesitate to do what you ask because I have not yet hung my old nature on the cross. Please help me to not let my ego stop me from asking your forgiveness for any hatred or unforgiveness in my heart towards another. Give me the strength, through your most Holy Spirit, to not only face any darkness still in me, but to let it go, both for the sake of the person I held it against as well as my own. You have forgiven me so much – I people to see that in me. In your holy name I pray - Amen.”