A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you Ezekiel 36:26 

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of our Father in heaven. Matthew 5:44-45 

Jesus tells us to love God and love our neighbor. For Him, neighbor means all the other people in the world. These verses from Matthew convey a message that most of us have great difficulty in understanding or following. How can we love our enemies? After all, they do not seem to love us at all. Plus, pray for those who might persecute us? That would be really hard to even consider doing.

After all, we often have trouble loving those close to us, people in our families, our closest friends at time seem very unlovable. How, then, do we go about loving the unlovable – those that don’t like us, those that commit violent crimes, those that hurt children. One thought is that God created all of us humans, and He loves all of us. He is always ready to forgive us, and is gracious and slow to anger. Us, not so much. We are often quick to anger.

The solution can be found in the verse from Ezekiel – God will give us new hearts to replace the stony ones of which we are so fond. He will also give us a new spirit; the Holy Spirit or Comforter was promised by Jesus to be with us. Since we certainly cannot love our enemies naturally with our human hearts, we can with the new heart provided by God and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We aren’t always going to be successful, loving our enemies is hard. However, we can reflect God’s love for us on all.

O God, allow us to really listen; to feel the Holy Spirit; to observe your love; to make love a part of everyday life; to share love with all; to try and love like you. Banish the anger that seeks to take over our hearts and give us a mind that is focused on love and mercy. We give you thanks for your grace and the gift of your Spirit. Amen

Chris Gabel

Ministries
Teaching Mission Party