Love Your Enemies

Love Your Enemies
“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Luke 6:27-28

The one place where the body of Christ in America is missing it is in this area of love. We seem to have some kind of entitlement mentality where we think we deserve this or that. So everytime someone says something hateful or provoking we take it personally and get angry and try to come up with some way to get back at them. And pretty soon the fight is on one way or the other. The truth is if we understand the love of God, we can really love our enemies! I told the story of the Ethiopian pastor who was living in Somalia with his family and his wife struck up a friendship with a Muslim lady and after they had gotten to know each other pretty well, the Muslim lady asked this pastor's wife what her secret was. She said everytime I see you, your always smiling and seem so happy. What is your secret. The pastor's wife begins to tell her about Jesus. This lady accepts Christ for herself and goes home. After time her husband begins to notice incredible change in his wife. She doesn't agrue & fight with him anymore and she doesn't argue & fight with the kids anymore. He wants to know what has happened to her. She didn't want to tell him because being raised in that culture she knows what happens to people if they convert to Christianity. But her husband was so pleased with the changes in his wife that she thinks she can tell him & maybe he will convert to. After telling him she had converted to Christianity & Jesus lives in her now her husband went ballistic. He beat her & grabbed a few of his friends & went to look for this pastor. He couldn't find the pastor but he found two of his kids & they grabbed them & tied them up hand and foot and called the wife over. They demanded the wife renounce her faith in Christ or they would kill her two boys. She couldn't renounce her faith & she had to watch those Muslim men kill her two sons. Sometime later, someone asked the Pastor how he felt about what had happened. He said he asked God for revenge. He asked God to save all of Somalia & that would be his revenge! These people really know how to love their enemies!
We have a hard time loving our friends. Everytime someone says something we don't like we get angry & start looking for ways we can hurt them. Jesus said the two greatest commandments were to love God with all our heart & to love our neighbor as ourself. In these two all the law & commandments are fulfilled.
Maybe it's time we started being obedient to the Scriptures. Later in that same chapter Jesus told a parable about a wise & foolish builder. The wise builder who built his house on a rock foundation was obedient & did what God said. The foolish builder built his house on the sand because he didn't obey the Word of the Lord. Are we going to be a wise builder or a foolish builder? You decide! As for me & my house we will serve the Lord! And in that we are choosing to love our enemies and our friends! Shaloam!