Oh, c’mon! It’s not enough to ‘love my enemies’ I have to treat them well and even lend to them, knowing I won’t get paid? What’s up with that?
I know that feeling. It’s horrible to feel betrayal’s whip once, but to receive it time and again by choice is impossible!
Yet this is what Jesus gave as an assignment to His followers. And you know that’s not just for those following Him when He walked the Judean soil. It’s also for you and me.
We like to think that following Jesus is easy, that it will provide us with comfort and health, ease and wealth. While following Him absolutely brings those, it also brings the hard stuff. He told us to expect suffering because of Him. He told us to expect to be reviled and poor. He also told us to love our enemies and treat them well.
Those who would revile us, hate us, mock us, even kill us, are to be loved by us and treated well. It’s enough to make us throw up our hands and tell God we just can’t do it.
When we tell God we can’t do it, we’re not saying we CAN’T. We’re saying we WON’T. I feel comfortable saying that, because if God says to do something, He knows we can—maybe not in our strength, but definitely in His.
God knows a thing or two about loving His enemies, that was us before salvation. He knows what it’s like to give and give and give to never hear a thank you. He knows what it’s like to lend to people and never receive an ounce of gratitude—to actually have it used against Him. He knows what it is to die for someone only to have them refute it.
If we’re to strive for Christlikeness, which is to be our ultimate goal of life, we must do the hard stuff, whether we like it or not. We must surrender to the Almighty and allow Him to accomplish this through us. Then, when our version of justice and vengeance rears up, we must surrender that, too.
Buckle up, Believer, it’s time to get to work!
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
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Faye Bryant is an author, coach, and speaker who helps individuals escape the lies of the enemy, live into God’s truth, and build a better life by first feeling, dealing, and healing their way through a stuck future or an abused past, toward a deeper path of purpose, and into the unhackable life of their chosen legacy. Hers is a story of resurrection: from death to life!
