BONUS: Love Their Enemies
Pardon the Mess with Scarlet Hiltibidal - Christian Motherhood, Biblical Parenting, Raising Christian Kids
Scarlet Hiltibidal and Christian Parenting
4.9 • 849 Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44)
It’s one thing to love your neighbor as yourself, it’s a whole other thing to love your enemies. As believers, we aren’t called to ignore our enemies or to tolerate our enemies, we are called to love them and to pray for them. This is a radical teaching that goes against the norm in society because it is much easier to judge or gossip about our enemies (guilty!). But even more, we are supposed to love our enemies without expecting anything in return.
Scripture makes it clear that the most powerful way we can actually love our enemies is to pray for them.
We begin to see a change in ourselves as we pray for others. First, we start to see our enemies the way God sees them, and God sees them as his beloved and dearly loved children, just like we are. Second, we can be freed from bitterness, resentment, and anger by praying for our enemies as our hearts are softened by the Holy Spirit.
So, this week let’s pray that our kids will love their enemies in a radical way and that they will begin to see themselves as God sees them.
Father God, loving our enemies starts with us. I pray that ___________ would learn to love their prayed and pray for them while establishing healthy boundaries. I pray that their hearts are softened towards the people who treat them poorly so that they see them the way you do. I pray for reconciliation and peace if ________ is being bullied or bullying others. Give me wisdom in those conflicts. Amen.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Christian Parenting |
| 0:03.5 | Good morning, friends. |
| 0:16.4 | We are going to pray about a tough one today. |
| 0:19.8 | How about loving our enemies? Not my favorite. |
| 0:22.6 | So I'm like, pass. Can I go on to the next one? But it turns out I need to do these every week. |
| 0:27.3 | So it was good for me to think through it. And before I came on here and talked to you about it, |
| 0:32.1 | and then pray about some specific enemies in my life, which is really, really helpful. For those of you that don't know me, some of you are joining me. |
| 0:39.8 | I met so many of you out speaking this last month, and some of you are new to the podcast. |
| 0:44.8 | So what we do every week on Mondays is we are praying through a specific journal that the team at Christian Parenting put together. |
| 0:51.3 | It is called a Life of Faith, and we are praying specifically that our kids |
| 0:54.2 | will know, love, follow, and share Jesus. And within those categories are a lot of details. |
| 1:00.1 | So if we talk about loving God and we want our kids to love God, one of those bullet points, |
| 1:05.9 | he commands us to love our enemies. So what does that look like? And so in Matthew 544, it says, love your |
| 1:12.9 | enemies and pray for those who persecute you, which is hard. But I think there's more to it. |
| 1:18.3 | I was looking it up on the internet this morning and kind of praying through it and at a website |
| 1:22.8 | called Word on fire.org. I love the way this author put it. It says, but Jesus command to love those we perceive |
| 1:29.4 | to be our enemies is actually a tool for discernment and for our own salvation. To love our enemies |
| 1:35.2 | means a great deal more than to simply not wish evil upon them. It means making a conscious effort |
| 1:41.1 | to find a path to our own mercy for their sake and our own. That path is found, |
| 1:46.9 | Jesus tells us, through prayer. Isn't that so good? And so there's so much that comes up as I think |
| 1:53.1 | about this, and I'm going to give us four quick tips. The first one is just recognizing this is hard. |
| 1:58.3 | And so I want to tell you, like, if you've got enemies and your family or your |
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