You have heard the law that says, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say, love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you. In that way, you will be acting as true children of your father in heaven.

For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.

If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that?

Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?

Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect in love, even as your father in heaven is perfect in love.

And so welcome back to the, while at Harp podcast here on the week of March 14th, John and Alan and Alex in the studio this week.

We are following a week of some pretty high octane feedback into the organization here around our praying for the war in Eastern Europe podcast that we did last week.

And I think I want to just begin by saying, you know what, we're human, we're fallible, we don't get everything right.

We don't, we don't get everything right. We maybe don't pray right. We don't say the right things. We're not inclusive enough. I get that.

But I just found myself wondering, whatever happened to the benefit of the doubt in the world today, like what, like wow, that sure feels like a vanishing quantity.

The benefit of the doubt. So rather than jumping into this is not a follow-up podcast to the war in Eastern Europe, because there are other things going on in the world that we are equally as empathetic about, broken hearted about, Yemen, Ethiopia, I mean on and on and on.

And it goes elections that are going on all kinds of things. It got me thinking, what does it look like? How do we operate as a mature follower of Jesus in an hour like this in in times like this?

And so that peace about love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. How's that going, fellas?

Wow. Not awesome. Man, I don't know that I thought a lot about it. Exactly. Right? Yes. Me too. Kind of just get a little swept up and things that are happening around you and and forget that whole piece. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.

I was hoping Alex would say more so I didn't have to say anything, but it's a missly hard. It's rare that I can genuinely pray for my enemies. I find I'm a much better per warrior when I'm praying for something.

And sometimes it gets something, but when it comes to trying to love people that are radically different or actively hostile, it's it feels like mission impossible a lot of times.

Yeah. I don't want to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. I was startling thought years ago that has haunted me and I wish I could credit who said this, but they said if you're not growing in love, you're dying as a soul, your soul is dying.

And I'm like, no, that's not true. I don't want that to be true. There are all kinds of other things. I'm growing in my ability to, you know, be a good dad or I'm growing in my ability to, you know, lead up organization.

But this whole idea of growing in maturity and love in a high octane moment like this, I think that's worth thinking about.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't have a problem with the idea that growing in love is a sign of maturity. I guess I just don't very often think about it in relation to my enemies.

...