Love Your Enemies | Don’t Be Your Own Worst Enemy

Loving your enemy is hard. It’s really, REALLY hard. It takes patience, restraint and understanding. The work of considering who my enemies are, what they believe, and how to understand where they are coming from can take a lot of energy. This requires more than just normal, daily living, and God would have us forgive our enemies daily.

One of the ways I have found to help with this is to consider God’s greatest commandment, according to Jesus:

Matt 22: 37-40
“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

After loving God, I find I am supposed to love my neighbor as myself. This implies I love myself, which I suppose I do, but I don’t think about it much. More often, I am harder on myself than I have ever been on another human being. This has been especially trying during this past year--feeling trapped at home and surrounded by the scourge of disease. I have been blessed with much support, thankfully, and my wife and I pray often for those who have not. My wife has told me to stop being so hard on her husband because she loves him and he is the beloved child of God. That makes me stop and consider: Am I not following God’s commandments by not loving myself as I would love my neighbor?

In addition to praying and seeking God, we must actually be the stewards of our bodies and minds in order to be able to love our enemies more fully – and to not become an enemy to self.

In taking care of my body, I try to see my physical self, in spite of its many flaws, as a gift from God. I try to exercise and eat well, but have failed at times. But I keep trying to stop the negative self talk, give it to God and move forward.

In taking care of my mind, I indulge in reading and watching shows with my wife. We both like playing games and have been enjoying some new ones as the pandemic months have dragged on. We take walks throughout the neighborhood, enjoying each other’s company and getting some physical exercise to boot!

In taking care of my spirit, my wife and I pray together. We continue to enjoy our Sunday church services with CitySalt on Sunday, albeit through YouTube, and also have enjoyed participating in other socially- distanced time with our church, friends and family.

In order to be ready to serve God in all that He asks: loving myself, loving my loved ones and loving my enemies, I am practicing loving myself first to fill up that well, that all might drink from it.

Matt 6:35-36
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

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About the Author

Mark lives in Oregon with his lovely wife, Darla and enjoys reading, writing, playing games and working to make the world a better place. He currently serves CitySalt church as a sound engineer and on the church council.

Gratitude | Wearing Gratitude as Armor

Important Note: I will not be discussing my, nor anyone else’s political views in this blog post.

On election day, I planned to start my day as usual, at my desk reviewing my list of priority tasks to accomplish. But I couldn’t get myself to look at my calendar app. I was distracted, restless, and unsettled. The only things I could manage to do were to read the latest election commentary, listen to live interviews, and watch the projected vote counts. Later that night I made phone calls to friends and I discovered we all felt the same thing that day: strong subconscious anxiety. This was a familiar feeling I have fought too often about a variety of topics.

I remembered times in my life in which painful situations that I couldn’t change left me feeling stuck. I remembered the intense frustration of not knowing which corrective actions to take for the sake of my emotional, spiritual, and physical health. I kept thinking about what I needed to do and how I felt virtually handcuffed, which intensified my anxiety.

It’s interesting how anxieties and fears can so easily attach themselves to us. Lies that jump on our backs, and once there, become increasingly heavy, weighing us down with an ungodly burden. Lies that want to limit what we can do and who we can be. Why would anyone believe a lie that would hurt them and rob them of God’s richest blessings? It’s an insidious process. These lies bombard us in such high quantities that it can be very hard to fight them off. And they try very hard to convince us that they do not exist. They work hard at becoming invisible to us. What we cannot detect, we cannot fight.

2 Thessalonians 3:3 NLT
“But the lord is faithful; He will strengthen you, and guard you from the evil one.”

We can trust our Heavenly Father to faithfully protect and provide for us. He is the creator of all good things. His truth enables us to see how things really are. No shadows, nothing is hidden. Our God is the author of truth who gifts us with many things.

I remembered a sermon from years ago which described one of the most powerful pieces of our spiritual armor: thankfulness for God’s love and faithfulness. I made a mental list of the things I am thankful for. It quickly became a longer list than I first expected.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 NLT
“Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”

I have adopted this strategy: When I feel bombarded with a heavy burden of lies, I list the many, many occasions and ways God has blessed me! As I do this, I am filled with relief and gratitude. And as I thank God for His many gifts and freedoms, I have felt the shouting lies fade into peaceful quiet. Gratitude protects us from spiritual and emotional illness, and frees us to continue our pursuit of becoming the person that God created us to be. Christ is patiently helping me grow into a more spiritually mature version of myself.

Philippians 4:8 NLT
“Fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely and admirable. Think about these things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

An ongoing practice of gratitude is the precious antidote to the poisonous lies that assault us all day long. And as you keep living in thankfulness, you get better at focusing on what is true by remembering all that God has already done for you. You realize how rich you really are. You have all that you could ever need in Christ.

James 1:17 NLT
“Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.”

What life experiences are on your thankfulness list? This new habit is changing my life. I encourage you to create your personal gratitude armor today!

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About the Author

Sara has attended CitySalt Church since 2004, the year it was founded. She studied Journalism, wrote for her college newspaper, and is a member of Oregon Christian Writers. Sara also enjoys singing hymns with friends: “there is a sermon in every hymn waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.”