Month: February 2021

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, but there’s not a whole lot of love in the air.  While there are plenty of candy hearts and flowers available, anger, frustration, fear, and disappointment seem to be the predominant emotions.  It’s far easier to see those around us as potential adversaries than prospective friends.  

Can I tell you something?  Your enemy isn’t the person who voted differently than you, your neighbor/coworker/friend who offended you, or even the person in your living room who hurt you. Our struggle for harmony has never really been because of the people around us (Ephesians 6:12).  

And can I tell you something else?  God loves your enemies.  

God loves your enemies.  He has moved heaven and earth on their behalf.  He has set aside His royal splendor to intervene on their behalf.  He has pursued and sought them. He has offered grace, mercy and forgiveness to them. He longs for them to be restored so they are reconciled with Him.  He doesn’t accept, approve, or condone the harm they’ve done to you or to others.  But in His kindness, He offers them the same fresh start that He has given to you.

God loves your enemies.  The people who disagree with you, inconvenience you, offend you, seek to harm you.  David had the opportunity to kill his enemy – the man who pursued and persecuted him.  But he understood that to give and take life is the privilege of God.  He trusted God to do what was right, just and fair – “The Lord will decide between us.  Perhaps the Lord will punish you for what you are trying to do to me, but I will never harm you”  (1 Samuel 24:12).  

Because we are human, not every relationship of ours will be reconciled.  Reconciliation requires confession (accepting responsibility for our actions) and repentance (turning fully away from the offending behavior), and some people are unwilling to do the hard work it requires.  But with God every relationship carries the possibility of reconciliation.  We ourselves “were restored to friendship with God by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies” (Romans 5:10, emphasis added).

God loves your enemies, and He has called you to love them as well.  “Love your enemies!  Do good to them!… [Then] you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to the unthankful and to those who are wicked” (Luke 6:35).  Only God is able to truly know the heart of any man or woman.  We must tread very, very carefully lest we reject and condemn what God has accepted and redeemed.  

We must be willing to let God deal with those who have offended us, with whom we don’t agree.  That means He may deal with them more kindly than we wish (hello, Jonah – see Jonah 4:1-2) or more slowly than we want (see Revelation 6:10-11).  This is hard for us.  But we have an example we can follow in Jesus, who not only said to turn the other cheek, but never even raised His voice in protest when He was beaten by His enemies (Matthew 5:39; Isaiah 53:7).  Instead, He entrusted Himself to God, because He knew God can be trusted. 

Do your part to live in peace with everyone, as much as possible.  Romans 12:18

I am the vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. John 15:1-2

Dead branches aren’t just deadweight; they take life-giving resources away from the rest of the plant.  They do real harm.  They must be removed so that what remains can grow and flourish.  

Maybe you already know that.  You’ve got a branch in your life that you’re certain is dead, that’s doing more harm than good.  That’s hurting you by hanging around.  So you’ve asked God to remove it.  And He hasn’t. 

The woman with the bleeding disorder comes to mind.  She’d been hemorrhaging for 12 years and had spent everything she had looking for relief.  I’d imagine she’d spent a lot of that time asking God to take away her condition.  But it wasn’t until she was in the middle of a crowd and she managed to touch Jesus’ robe that the bleeding branch revealed its fruit.  Because “the whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed” (Luke 8:47).  She became an evidence-giver about the power and compassion of the Savior.  She experienced real and serious suffering, and it produced real and significant fruit in her life and in the lives of those around her.

If God has allowed a branch to remain, you can be sure there will be fruit.  It might be slow growing and it might come when you least expect it. The blind man in John 9 had been waiting his whole life for that burden to be removed, until the day that Jesus walked by and revealed the reason it was there in the first place – “he was born blind so that the power of God could be seen in him” (John 9:3).  

What if our burdens are simply the means by which God’s power will be revealed?  Can we bear them more patiently, more willingly, when we know that God doesn’t waste anything?  Not our heartache, our mistakes, or our suffering.  “Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion according to the greatness of his unfailing love.  For he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow” (Lamentations 3:33).  He tells us flat out that there’s a purpose for everything that He allows in your life – to make more fruit (John 15:2). 

God can do much good with the fruit that grows in the soil of suffering – producing things like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22) – if only we are willing to wait for the harvest.