Is it duty or honor to love our enemies?
Is it duty or honor to pray for them?
I was reading the news and there were mugshots of a couple.
Without the news, this couple looked like a questionable set, dirty, stringy hair, unshaven,
even the woman had a 5 o’clock shadow,
They had hurt their children and a dog.
I heard the Lord tell me to pray for them.
What do you mean God?
He wanted me to pray for the whole situation, the children, them, the investigation, all of it.
I protested. I had them as throw-aways, going to Hell, creatures from the darkest corners of the Earth.
Pray for them.
So, out of duty, I prayed for them.
My heart was not in it. There was no love, still, just disgust.
I put all that aside and went to Sunday School.
But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them,
They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice:
for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Matthew 9:12-13
While the Sunday School lesson was on a different chapter, this is the lesson I was learning:
God comes to save the sick and don’t’ be a like Pharisee and decide what God wants to do.
The lesson was on the Pharisees and how they didn’t receive Jesus or what He said.
Wasn’t that what I was doing?
Not loving my enemies as I was commanded?
Arguing against what Jesus was asking?
Do we only love the lovely? Those easy to love?
What about these mugshot people?
Or those in Syria and Nigeria who are martyring Christians and torturing them?
What is Jesus wanting from me?
I can pretend, out of duty to pray, which is what I did.
But is that honoring God?
Is that allowing Him to love through me? To reach down to snatch those wretched souls out of the fire?
My heart was still not in this idea of praying for them. Duty, but no honor.
There was no honor towards God except that I was doing what He told me to do,
what He has told all of us to do, to love people in His name.
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar:
for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen? 1 John 4:20
Oh, but are these people my brethren?
I might be able to get away with that on that verse,
but the whole bible teaches us to love our enemies.
People did not always do that, but that has always been God’s best.
God gave Daniel love for the king who threw him in the Lion’s Den.
Jesus is very clear about that in the New Testament and if we look at David and his enemy Saul,
he was still an example of how Christ would have been as God was working in David’s heart.
Because David let Him.
I can still pray for justice to be served.
My heart needs to be right. God is the Judge, not me.
I don’t get to decide who goes to Hell and who does not.
I don’t get to determine what their fate will be.
Try as I may, I will start with their children and the dog.
I will pray the investigation will be completed
without anything falling through the cracks from the legal standpoint.
I will pray for all the police who had to see the evidence of what was done and then, last but not least,
I will pray for those two to find repentance before the Lord Jesus in their despair. Gulp.
This is not a work of my heart that can be done in the flesh. No matter how hard I try, it won’t happen.
This is only a work that Christ can do in me and through me and to let forgiveness flow from me
so that my prayers can go forward without hindrance.
It’s a big order because I know how I feel about this. God has His work cut out for Him.
He is able and most of all, He is God.