Pray for your enemies

In connection with this command from Matthew 5:44), I was thinking this morning about a time not that long ago when I had been seeking to see if a brother and I were cool after a mix up. In the exchange, not only was I being blamed for something he had missed, but he was taking advantage of my vulnerability to try and control me into doing something for which I had already told him I was not available. There are two things that help me in this kind of scenario. The first is to remember that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). In other words the person in front of me is not the enemy. The enemy is unseen, but is using the person’s hurts, habits and hangups to get to me, and to distract me from my mission to live for Jesus. If I heard God correctly He was telling me this was learned behaviour. It’s called control.

In thinking about it afterwards, I was feeling that I had received what I consider to be a word of knowledge. It was that as a child when he would come to his difficult to please mother to apologize, she would use his vulnerability to manipulate him into doing something he had resisted doing. I consider it likely that she in turn received the same from her parents (Exodus 20:5 NKJV). It seems to me obvious that much of our behaviour, the way we respond to life, is learned from our parents, the good, the bad and the ugly. I think that this is what it means to say that the Lord “visits the sins of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5 NKJV). Some translations have "punish" rather than "visit." But Ezekiel 18:20 explicitly says that God does not punish the children for the father's sins, so the above is a valid alternative translation of the Hebrew, and is preferred.

The second thing that helps me, is to understand, as modern brain research has revealed, that our thoughts are always tied to our emotions. Not only this, but repeating a thought amplifies the emotions (as in they get stronger). This is why we need to learn to take every thought captive unto the obedience of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). And one of the primary and I suspect long neglected things we need to bring to obedience, is to pray for our enemies (and for those that frustrate us). When we do this sincerely, and we might have to ask the Lord to help us in this, then we are coming against it in the opposite spirit. And when we practices doing this, our positive thoughts will (eventually) produce positive, emotions. I found journaling helpful in getting things out of my head. At one stage in my journey I was journaling sixty plus typed pages a month. That was before I discovered it works best if we are “pouring out our complaints to the Lord” (Psalm 142:2), rather than writing letters we in all likelihood we should not send!

Father, we need (I need) help in bringing every thought captive unto obedience. Thank You Lord that the weapons of our warfare are mighty for pulling down the strongholds that our negative thinking and obsessing thinking produced (2 Corinthians 10:4). You have told us to love our enemies, and we choose to receive grace to do this, this morning Lord in Jesus Name Amen