ACE #36: Why Loving Your Enemies Really Hurts...A Lot

Who are YOUR enemies? Maybe they are closer to you than you think in one of these forms:

• Your best friend
• Your co-worker
• Your sibling
• Your parent
• Your boss
• Your fellow church member
• Your classmate
• A perfect stranger
• Yourself

Sometimes you cannot even confirm that someone is your enemy, you just speculate.  Sometimes the person you think is your worst enemy could care less one way or the other about you. You're just paranoid...or something like that.  There are times when you have enemies that you don't even know about or that you didn't even make in the first place...or so you think.

I've asked myself the question many times, "Why didn't Jesus just go off on Judas?"  I mean, didn't Judas deserve it?  Part of it was because He already knew that Judas would betray Him.  I think the other side of it was because He could not teach His disciples how to forgive if He had not shown them what forgiveness looked like...even in the hurtfulness and reality of such a costly betrayal.  Jesus showed both mercy and love to Judas.

When you love your enemies, you become a CHAIN BREAKER!  You break a destructive, bitter cycle that spins and spins until sometimes it's out of control and you've involved more people than necessary "to jump on your bandwagon". When you forgive them, there's no more resentment, no more bondage - only freedom.

God has promised us that no weapon that forms against us will prosper - that includes your enemies.  Pastor Ray said it best, "Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be your enemy."  And if you are someone else's enemy, there is always an opportunity to make it right...

Study Link:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+54%3A17&version=NKJV

Fred Hammond - No Weapon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAkMvK1Ljw

 

Photo credit raynoah.com