So, Jesus had enemies, and, when He said to pray for our enemies, He knew what He was talking about. His friends deserted Him in His worst moment (Mark 14:50), and the city who had cried “ Hosanna!” when He arrived in town shouted “Crucify Him!” a few days later (Mark 15:13). His own family was ashamed of Him and tried to make Him stop preaching (Mark 3:21). The religious leaders mocked and tried to trap Him (John 8:6). His own people rejected His message (John 1:11). He demonstrated that standard by never retaliating when someone wronged Him. However, Jesus calls us to a higher standard. They smeared our reputation we’ll smear theirs, too. They gossiped about us we’ll gossip about them. When someone sets out to cause us harm, our natural reaction is to protect ourselves and fight back. He had something better in mind that will benefit us as well as our enemies. But that is not what Jesus meant by praying for our enemies. When someone wrongs us, we’d like to pray that disaster falls on them! We may be tempted to pray the imprecatory psalms and hope to sit back and watch God exact vengeance on the evildoers, much like Jonah did outside of Nineveh. Our first response to that question is probably not the right one. In Matthew 5:43–45, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” It is clear that Jesus expects us to pray for our enemies, but how do we do that? Most familiar to us is the passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In this case, that may very well be the closest you can keep them.Several places in the Bible command us to pray for our enemies (Luke 6:27, 35 Romans 12:20). There is an old saying that says “you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”. However, we must never give up the fight. Sometimes we will prevail, and sometimes we will fail. There will always be a struggle between the force of good within our minds and the force of evil within our bodies. Make no mistake our greatest enemy is not the Devil, it is our own flesh and blood. Our mind is driven to do good while our flesh is driven to do otherwise. It is the same struggle that Paul dealt with in Romans 7.15-25, that we call the dual nature of man. No, it isn’t your spouse I am talking about your own self. We too have an arch enemy that is very close to us as well in fact you live with this person 24/7. The entire conflict between the two was one that was seasoned with hatred and love. The hatred from Absalom grew so much against David that he had to flee his own city into the mountains, to save his own life. This must have been the most difficult of foes for David, because it was his own son. The one person that David had to really face as a threat to his life, as well as his kingdom, was his own flesh and blood, Absalom. Then one might think it was Saul, who constantly sought David’s life, but that too was short lived. One might think it was Goliath, but that was too easy for David to defeat because he was always the bad guy. David was no different he also had his own nemesis. In every situation, this person would be a thorn in the side of the hero. Batman had the Joker, Superman had Lex Luthor and Peter Pan had Captain Hook.
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