Love + Prayer 

Beautiful People,

Pray for your enemies. Through the saving grace of Jesus Christ, we can pray for our enemies. Yesterday’s GMU centered on the transformative power of grace. Something happened when we chose to live a life of dignity and grace. The practice of grace is accomplished only through the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, I have the deliberative ability to “love [my] enemies and pray for those who persecute [me]” (Matthew 5:44). The action to pray for my enemy is a manifestation of God’s love. We all have an “enemy” in our lives—that one co-worker, friend, family member, or spouse. Sin has broken every relationship and has caused us to treat each other with indifference; however, the Kingdom of God provides another solution—action-oriented love. The Kingdom of God says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). We all have challenging people in our lives, and at times, we are someone’s challenge. We can continue to live a life where evil overcomes and dominates each relationship we have, or we can make a pivot and let God’s grace and love saturate our hearts.

Don’t get me wrong, loving an enemy takes grit and the love I am ascribing to you takes sacrifice. An emotional force does not characterize God’s love; it is a principle that patterns our lives to the character of Heaven. Loving your enemy is not a weak approach to conflict resolution either. Loving your enemy through an intentional and practical application of love demonstrates grace, discipleship, integrity, and courage. Jesus would never ask us to do something that He hasn’t empowered us to do. Love and pray for your enemies not because you have to but because your heart is so saturated by grace that you can’t help it.

Prayer: Jesus, saturate our hearts with Your love so that we can love our enemies out of principle. Make us peculiar in the eyes of the world regarding our treatment of our enemies. Though we were once enemies, You loved us and gave Yourself for us! As your children, may we do the same! Amen! 

Have a great day praying for each other.

P.S. This week, we start our Power-Pac. Our speaker is Pr. Rome Ulia! He starts off our Power-Pac with uGather this Thursday at 10:35 AM in the church!

Here is a video by Pr. Rome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuOdRbjmKoU