43-47“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
~Matthew 5:43 (The Message)
Even Christians squirm at this teaching of Christs. It is easy to forget how powerful a love Jesus has called us to live in. We are called to live in HIS love and not ours. It is easy to do what is only natural and not go above and beyond loving those you find it easy to embrace, but this doesn’t make it right for us to turn from his clear teachings. Often that which is easy isn’t what is right and we know that deep down.
All the walls preventing us from practising this teaching come from a root of selfishness. If we are walking in our own strength we will slip into the mindset of the world, but then why call oneself a Christian if we don’t seek to live as Christ?
Living his way is only accomplished by sacrificing your whole self to living in and through him. Jesus is more then willing to take all you and your STUFF on. Are you willing to take on a completely counter cultural saviour?
P.S. May your heart be stirred to remember, when faced with a seeming foe, that Christ saw EVERYONE as worth loving. They might not be worthy of it, we aren’t usually worthy of it either, but Jesus declared they and we worth him dying on the cross.
For an inspiring message CLICK HERE to listen to the audio recording.
TTFN
