Love Your Enemies
Jesus tells us that to truly reflect the character of God, we must love our enemies. Many of us might feel we don’t have any enemies, especially because we can insulate ourselves from opinions, people, and ideas we don’t like with the click of a button. Let’s talk about how we can follow this teaching of Jesus today in the 21st century. You’ll need either your phone or notebook to write something down, so go ahead and get that now.
- Have you ever had an enemy? What was that like?
Read Matthew 5:43-48.
- In what ways do you see people treating their enemies today that don’t reflect this teaching? Are you guilty of any of these?
- If every single person in the world put Matthew 5:44 into practice, how different would our world be? What might change in our families, neighborhoods, nations, and the world?
Kendall said that in order to love our enemies, we have to actually be around our enemies. Or to put it another way, in order to love someone who’s hard to love, I need to have someone hard to love in my life.
- Do you agree? How does this mentality affect the way you see your family, coworkers, neighbors, and fellow Atlantan drivers?
Read Matthew 5:43-48 again.
Kendall pointed out that in Jesus’s view, “perfection” isn’t knowing our Bibles better than anyone, or sinning less than others, or being evangelistically persuasive. What makes you “perfect”, and therefore the most like God, is the degree to which we are able to love the unlovable.
- How has God showed up in your life when you’ve been unlovable?
Write down the name of someone that you think God is calling you to go out of your way to love (hint: it’s probably the person you don’t want to write down). What is one way you can commit to loving them this week?
Pray to close.
