Tag: enemies

Do We Understand What Jesus Said?

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Julie Green is a voice that speaks what she calls “prophetic words” daily about happenings that she says are coming to our nation. This morning, her YouTube video popped up on my page and it read “A Trap Is Set”. This statement caught my attention because I was praying Psalm 35 this morning and I was praying these words with the psalmist, “Let their way be dark and slippery, With the angel of the LORD pursuing them. For without cause they hid their net for me; Without cause they dug a pit for my soul. Let destruction come upon him unawares, And let the net which he hid catch himself; Into that very destruction let him fall.” I was praying these words for our nation, that whatever traps may be set against us would be the very traps those who set them fall into.

After praying, then seeing what Julie had as her title for the day, I began to realize, most Christians do not pray with this type of language, because we have misunderstood the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:43-44 “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The church has been told to love their enemies, therefore, to declare our enemies fall into their own trap seems unloving to many believers, so the enemy runs rampant in our nation and we wonder why. Church we are the gatekeepers of this nation! Our misunderstanding of Jesus’ words has allowed the enemy right in the front door of our nation.

Jesus sat at a table and had a final Passover meal with His disciples, where He called out His enemy, Judas. in front of everyone. Was that loving? Yes it was, why? Because 1 Corinthians 13 says, love always protects. Jesus’ love protected Judas from the fate about to befall him and it protected His other disciples from falling for the same trap. Jesus said love your enemies because He knew we cannot have both love and hate inside of us without hate corrupting our love for people. If we have any mixture in us, we cannot reign and rule with Him as sons, for we may, like the sons of thunder, want to call fire down one minute and lean on his chest the next. We must have pure love, but that does not mean we don’t know who the enemy is and call him out as such. And we definitely don’t let the enemy in the front door of our house, church or nation.

Access Denied

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Love does not mean access! This is what the Lord said to me as I was reading Ezra this morning. He said, “You can love your enemies without giving them access to you and what you are building.” Enemies appear helpful in order to gain access, but once access is denied we will see they are an enemy and not an ally. Enemies can masquerade as polite, helpful, or even beneficial for a moment, but tell them no and you will see they are still an enemy.

Now listen to Ezra 4:1-3 “Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile were building a temple to the LORD God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ households, and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; and we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here.” But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers’ households of Israel said to them, “You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together build to the LORD God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia has commanded us.”

The church hears the word enemy and immediately hears the words of Jesus, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28) Then we argue in our heads with the words, “Love does not mean access.” Jesus was speaking in the context of the beatitudes in Luke, the parallel passages are in Matthew 5. The kingdom of God does not hate its enemies, like the world hates those who do not agree with them, align with them or do what they say. The kingdom of God can say no to their enemies when it comes to access but still love them. This is hard for a humanistic culture, because we equate love with access, but 1 Corinthians 13 says, “Love protects!” When you love someone you protect them from the enemy that comes to steal, kill and destroy them (John 10:10). This is why love does not mean access.