Relentless love
I read Matthew 5:43-48 today.
The people who Jesus was talking to had allowed cultural prejudices to affect the way that they saw different people within society. They hated their enemies. Now these enemies could have been anyone that were not Jewish, they certainly didn’t like the Samaritans! They could have been people with leprosy. Who knows who their enemies were, the list could go on and on. The problem was that they had got none of this prejudice from the bible. Jesus wanted to challenge them again that they were not living the life that God wants for them.
It’s easy for us to allow the cultural prejudices around us to affect the way we treat people, the way we look at people. It’s also quite easy to love those that love you. But Jesus wants us to love those that don’t love us. To pray for those people that we would see as our enemies. Interesting how He doesn’t say hate those that hate you, go to war against those that don’t believe in me.
We are called to be a people who love everyone. God provides for everyone, those that love Him and those that don’t. This doesn’t mean that we are all going to heaven, we all still need to come to Jesus and follow him.
Jesus is saying here, live life Gods way and Gods way is love. When someone takes the mickey out of you for being a Christian, love them and pray for them. When you are attacked for what you believe in, love them. God doesn’t want us to get revenge, attack anyone or hold hate in our hearts.
I have this picture of a person getting knocked down time and time again and getting back up time and time again. I have heard stories of millionaires that have made a fortune and when they first started they kept getting knocked back, but that didn’t stop them they carried on and on. I often think how many people are there that allowed the circumstance of their life to cause them to stay down and not get back up and I think if only they got back up and tried again they could be in a better place.
Jesus wants us to live a life of Relentless love a love that no matter how many times its knocked back gets back up and keeps on going. A love that seeps into everything we do and every part of our lives. A love that has no favorites.
My prayer for us all is that we grasp a hold of this and press on. There may be some of you that have been knocked down, today is the day for you to get back up and make the decision to love relentlessly. And the good news is we don’t have to do this alone. At this point Jesus had already been given the Holy Spirit to help and we can also walk in the same way as Jesus. Look at my blog on the Holy Spirit.
May God pick you up, dust you off and lead you forward into a life of Relentless love.
