A Different Kind of Valentine
“But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!” Matthew 5:44 NLT
Today is Valentine’s Day. This day we think about those we love & we want to do something special with them. We take time out of our schedules to show our loved ones that we love them.
The verse today speaks of love - but love of for our enemies. It reminds us we must pray for those who persecute us. This doesn’t sound like our typical Valentine’s Day message. Why would we do this? Don’t we have enough with praying for those we love? Who has enough time to pray for their enemies too?
I learned this valuable lesson in college & I still do it today. My professor told us to pray for our enemies & ask God to bless them. Sounds super crazy right? It really does work & helps heal your heart. Every time someone upsets me, I don’t pray, “Dear God so & so really upset me. May they stop upsetting me. Show them how to behave properly (LOL!).” I actually pray that God blesses them & brings good things into their lives. This helps me look at that person differently & changes the way that I feel about them. It shows me how God sees this person & shows them His love. God wants to use us to show His love to everyone especially when it is highly difficult to do.
I know that our reaction to someone hurting us or worst hurting someone we love is to hope that God gets this person out of our lives. We don’t want to deal with them, confront them or perhaps we hope that they “get what they deserve”. We think that this hurts the other person but typically it hurts us the most & the other person moves on not realizing that they hurt us. We keep this unhealthy view in our hearts & it affects us & loved ones around us. When someone hurts us, we need to stop & pray that we see that person the way that God sees them. We have no idea what that person is going through & we really don’t know their intensions. We assume they intend to hurt us, but this is probably false. They probably just didn’t think or realize how much pain they would cause.
“We pray for You to bless our enemies and to orchestrate events in their lives that will leave their hearts exposed before You. As You characterized blessings in the Beatitudes, we pray that You would give them a poverty of spirit that recognizes their deep need for You. We pray they will discover Your comfort in times of mourning, and they would be humbled before You—in Your way and Your time. We pray You would show them mercy before it is too late—knowing we were all God’s enemies before You extended mercy to us—and that they would, in turn, be merciful to others. Amen.” (Crosswalk.com -Rebecca Barlow Jordan)