Forgive your Enemy


For the season of Lent I'll be sharing devotions from Grace Lutheran's devotional book: "Forgiven." 

While these devotions are not my words and may not represent my own faith or theological understanding, they are valuable personal faith perspectives of 40 of Grace's members and I am so grateful for their generosity in sharing them.

Part Five: All Can Be Forgiven

Matthew 5:43-48 (forgive your enemy)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.


   What a time to pray for forgiveness. Most of us pray for forgiveness for ourselves. We are sinners, we know it, God knows it and that’s why we pray. In Matthew, Jesus talks of praying, not ourselves, but for our enemies.

Our enemies? You can’t be serious Jesus? Yes he is. It is a time when literally, “the enemy is at the gates”. The enemy comes in from the sky, the enemy comes in from the sea and the enemy lies within our own borders. How can we stop this? Build a wall? Inspect every plane and ship that enters our country. Sure we try, but it’s not a fail-safe plan. What we need to do is pray for their hearts to change. Only God can stop the madness that exists in our world. Through prayer, hopefully he will.

Prayer:
  God we pray that those that seek to destroy us realize that we are not the enemy. That the enemy exists in their hearts and that we ask that you repair those hearts so that we can all love one another the way your son taught us.

Amen


~ Ken

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