Tag: Loving Enemies

Learning to Love Like God (Part 2)

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This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters,~1 John 3:16.

The greatest commandment given to us is to love. The first post covered first receiving love from God, forgiving others, and how we learn to love. Jesus is our role model and example for love. He perfectly represented the Father.

I’ve noticed that love is one of the most misrepresented aspects of God’s character. Love defined by our terms does not equal love from God’s perspective. What does it mean to love your enemies? Does love mean you do everything that’s asked of you? Is love about feelings or choice? Does loving a person mean you need to be their best friend? Does love mean you never speak up if someone or something is wrong?

Loving Your “Enemies”:

First I will say, though people may oppose, harass, torment, or abuse others, the real enemy is not people.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms,~Ephesians 6:12.

The first step in loving “enemies” is to recognize people are not the enemy. Jesus prayed for His persecutors, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” You may say, “Some people know exactly what they are doing!” This may be true, but God’s heart is for repentance. We, too, want to see people right with God. There will be a final judgement of people, everyone will not go to heaven. And some who claim Him, will not either (Matthew 7:21).

We love our “enemies” by forgiving, praying, and blessing. It does not profit us as Jesus said in Luke 6:32 to only love and bless those who love and bless us; even sinners do that.

Doing Whatever is Asked of You:

There are many scriptures that talk about being generous. Does this mean if someone walks up to you on the street and asks you to empty your accounts you should just do it? No. If God prompts you to, then yes. God blesses people who are generous, and He loves a cheerful giver.

Jesus did only what He saw the Father doing, not everything people asked of Him. When Lazarus was sick, Jesus stayed where He was until he died. There was a purpose for Jesus remaining where He was. He had a miracle planned.

Addressing extremes:

Do nothing…,

There are people who believe they should not do anything unless they want to. They only give, help, serve, or sacrifice when they want to. This isn’t scriptural. Jesus encourages and asks us to be a blessing.

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?~1 John 3:17.

Do everything…,

It’s wonderful to serve. Serving (doing for others) can become our identity. God doesn’t love us for what we do. Our identity is child of God. Even God rested after creating the world. Jesus retreated to be alone with the Father. We can’t be all things to all people. Only God can meet everyone’s needs. When serving replaces caring for our families, health, or time alone with God, it’s taken a wrong place in our lives.

Feeling or Choice:

I truly believe love is both a feeling and choice. We can feel loving or unloving towards someone, yet choose to demonstrate love in our actions. If we base love only on feelings, then love will not be constant. It’s not natural to selflessly love. It doesn’t feel good to our flesh. The Holy Spirit in a believer always wants to love. God is love.

Best Friends with Everyone:

We don’t have the time, energy, emotional capability, or ability to be everyone’s best friend or friend. We can be friendly and kind to everyone. However, offering ourselves up to be friends with everyone leads to burnout and sometimes heartache. Trust me on this one. Jesus had 12 disciples and spent a considerable amount of time with 3. He entrusted His mother Mary to 1, John.

I’ve learned to be friendly to everyone, yet reserve the closest parts of life and heart to a very, select few. Not every person can be your friend, and that doesn’t mean you don’t love them. You give different people different levels of access and intimacy. Love sets boundaries.

Correction:

Love does not go along with what’s wrong. God corrects those He loves. Unconditional love is not the same as unconditional approval. I had someone I was friends with years ago tell me, “I don’t want anyone telling me if I’m doing something wrong.”

Proverbs 15:5 says, “a fool despises correction.” It seems harsh. We don’t like to be wrong. The person who refuses any correction is unwise. We grow from feedback. The person unwilling to allow anyone to speak into their life does not understand love.

This does not mean we become the sin police. We are to check ourselves first, then gently correct others.

Lastly, but most importantly, we rely on God. It’s His love and strength that helps us in our weakness.

Father, help us to rely on You to love as You love.

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Your Real Enemy (Part II)

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I normally don’t write two posts back to back, but I hope this post will be a blessing. I recommend reading yesterday’s post, Your Real Enemy, as well. I wanted to write about people today. People have been tagged as our enemies for years. If I were to ask you who your enemies were, I bet you could name a few people. It may be a leader, family member, boss, sibling, parent, co-worker, or ex-friend/spouse. I want to tell you once again, people are not our real enemies. People can be used by God or the devil. At any given moment a person can be used to bless or curse. Even people who go to your church can be used by the evil one, if they are not walking under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Here is an example from my own life.

My first job out of college I encountered a manager who hated me for no reason. This person started out by telling me how I would not be successful. This person then spent the next 4 years sabotaging small things on my programs, bad mouthing me to our boss, trying to get me fired, yelling at me in public, and basically making life at work unbearable. I did tell this person on numerous occasions they could not treat me poorly, but they feared no consequences from management. I prayed a lot during that time. Honestly, I prayed this person would be terminated or quit for they not only harassed me, but others. Some of us banded together to speak with human resources to no avail. In my mind this person was an enemy. I did not hate this person, but I could not see past their actions. I saw an evil person instead of a person God loved who did not know how much they were loved.

As a young person who loved Jesus the only things I knew to do were 1. Pray 2. Try to never retaliate 3. Seek help from God and within our organization.

Fast forward, after extensive prayer, I was removed from under this person. There was a battle to be moved, and I lost all the programs where I had invested time and energy. I went from overseeing 9 programs to 1. I had to prove my worth and competency. At first I was angry because my clients loved me; I worked non stop. I was not doing anything wrong. I had great reviews from everyone except this one person, but this one person was able to plant a seed of doubt in my boss’s mind even with over a dozen other people complaining. Let’s get to the good part of the story. This person after years of harassment approached me one day to tell me they knew I was a Christian because I never retaliated against them. They are now a born again believer. Yeah Jesus! Forgiving them wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. We can’t hang on to the things people do to us. Holding on only leads to our detriment.

When we want to retaliate against people, the thing to remember is that the person attacking us is someone God deeply loves. When people attack, harass, slander, hurt, persecute others, are unloving; they have not fully received the fullness of God’s love. A person who is filled with the love of God normally won’t knowingly harm another person. A person walking in the Spirit normally won’t either. Does that mean a person filled with God’s love and Spirit won’t ever hurt others? No. As humans we stumble. We are not perfect. We can hurt people without even knowing it. If we’re listening, God will let us know if we have strayed from the path of love.

Also, there are times when we are hurt and others are hurt and it’s because of our sin or perceptions.

Our Role in Loving People

The goal is to point people to God. The goal is be an instrument of truth and grace. It is not unloving to tell another person they cannot speak hatefully to you, especially if it’s someone you’re connected to (friend, family, spouse, co-worker, child). The goal isn’t to be the world’s doormat, but to show the world that evil does not have to lead to evil. Good conquerors evil. If it’s someone close to you, you may have to set boundaries with them. Check out Dr. Cloud and Dr, Townsend’s books on Boundaries. We are called to point people to the truth.

I hope and pray that we can see people as God does. I am still praying this for myself. We may not be able to be the best of friends with everyone, but we are called to live at peace with everyone as far as it is up to us. We are called to pray for our enemies, bless and not curse, to not do harm to others. May we live loved and love others.