Read by Dr Hendrick
Matthew 17:20 (NIV) 20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Faith is a gift from God. But many of us don’t even experience a “mustard seed of faith” in our walk with God! Can God trust us with faith even this small? One of the main reasons why we have such little faith is that we have not lived through the process of abandonment & come to a place where God can trust us with great faith. There must be a time when in our own words & in our own way, we say to God,
“Do with me what you will!”
Until we experience an abandonment of this kind, faith simply cannot be given to us safely. Once we have abandoned our lives to God, we are ready to receive the gift of faith that will enable us to love others well. Love with patience. Love without conditions. Love without irritation or anger. The kind of love we receive when we walk in humility that comes from having died to our selves.
How to “love our enemies”? Service to others is one of the easiest ways to begin loving someone. Helping people is something we all can do, & it helps us to grow in our ability to relate to others. There are many levels in relating to people including choosing to be with them, being present & engaged with them, & experiencing the gift of love as we move into delighting in them. It is not easy to consistently love our families & friends at the heart level, much less our enemies.
Delighting in those who have cursed us, hurt us, scorned us & looked down on us? It’s hard to do - very hard! This is where we often give up on love. We should NOT try to love that person; instead, we should train to become the kind of person who would love them. Only then can the ideal of love pass into a real possibility & practice.
Our aim under love is not to be loving to this or that person, or in this or that kind of situation, but to be person possessed by love as an overall character of life. Our responses to specific occasions when we are to act flows out of our overall character.
I do not come to my enemies & try to love them; I come to them as a loving person. The good tree bearing good fruit.
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