Love more powerful

Love more powerful than hate. Love more powerful. Love is more powerful because God created it. God is the essence of love because that is who He is. There is so much of that going on now days. Seems like everyone is trying to be (right) these days. You can turn on the news and it is everywhere like a disease. No matter how we might try we can't seem to irradiate black and white or white or black or for that matter other ethnicities. No matter where you turn there is a wrong to be written off and be made right, or forced hands creating criminal, unjust acts of hate. That is not love. It is pure "flesh" being allowed to be unbridled. Everyone wants equal rights while on the other hand being corrupt if they are not given special privileges for doing wrong before God. No matter how you toss the dice there is no such thing as giving equal rights for wrongs. There is no way to be 100% politically correct. We are a people who let's face it have fallen short of the Glory of God since sin entered the Garden. We are beautifully flawed. There is no way to correct our incorrectness. We will always find fault with someone. Naturally, it's just easier to call into judgment what we see fair. Of course who wouldn't want life to be fair? If we feel we have been wronged in some way naturally we feel the right to go after that corporation or people or friend that someone we know. Naturally we want to see the hand dealt to them the way we see fit.   

Half the battle of loving our enemy's is learning to forgive. Learning to forgive has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God. Why can't we forgive? Why can't we move on from those things which have greatly offended us, simply take it, stuff it and let it go? No one really knows the person they are greatly offending. Every person, has a life, a story a background that we know nothing about, even when we think we do, simply because we have based our judgment on whatever we have passed judgment on because to us it seems fair and just. Do we really think we are always right?

It is so often easy for us to believe that this world owes us something.That is for the weak minded. We are not weak minded are we? I would like to believe we are trying to get to know the life's stories of those around us. Not shy away from getting to know our closest neighbors, and I don't mean that as your next door neighbor, I mean that as let's think about the people we are passing judgment on. We are not just and we are not fair by any means.

When we know Jesus, our perspective changes. It changes totally! I would like to tell you that I am an expert at loving my enemy's but it is continually a battle, but Jesus teaches us to love, unconditionally. Meaning not with an added condition. Jesus convicted me of His word to me written in  (Luke 6:32) "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them." We have to learn how to forgive first within our hearts. Learning to forgive those who have greatly offended us teaches us how to have a peace that surpasses all understanding because it is Jesus who is doing the loving through us.

There are times when I have held people in contempt in my heart.  I honestly had a huge dislike for my enemy. There is just something that I had not at all thought of. Who was I to judge them? What were their stories, I did not know. Were their lives as fortunate as mine, I had a great family and childhood. I had parents who were always there for me and always present. Not that you can't have all that and still have a way ward life but I did not know the history of these my enemy's people who had offended me. All I knew was that they stole from me my joy and it was up to me to give myself permission to forgive and set myself free of what all I had been holding onto.  

Praying for them was the last thing I wanted to do. Believe me the last thing I wanted to do was pray for my enemy's and for God to be good to them. All I wanted was for everyone who had turned my joy into troubled waters to understand that their wrongs caused me too feel offended, sad and frustrated. I wanted to keep my world safe from the unkindness of this world and the people who would turn out to be an unreliable person or an untrue friend.  But I learned a very important lesson. It wasn't the friends, it wasn't. It wasn't the many entangling things that I could feel a sense of irritation or frustration with that could come into my life to take my joy captive. It occurred to me one day while driving home one day, but that I could pray for their spiritual release, that they have an encounter with the Holy Spirit for those who had not been true to who they were in my life.

When the captives who are being held captive by the result of sin within their lives find freedom in Christ forgiveness that is a victory. It's so easy to want to open our months and defend our positions in life. Why? For what so we can exercise our assertiveness. I totally get that. I do. I mean who wants to be a second seat to someone who is continually offending you and frustrating you and upsetting you. You know what, sometimes we must absolutely be the light that is shining brighter than the person who maybe trying to, "Lord," it over you. It may seem totally unfair. Sometimes I have wanted over and over to open my mouth where God is more than capable of handling a situation that I am in no way shape or form able to fight a battle that really only belongs to God.

Is it pride that keeps us in the place that we are standing in? Sometimes, I think it is. For example there have been times, occasion when I would have like to share a piece of my mind. However, I have done my very best to hold my reply. There have been many times, occasions when I have felt that I would have like to defend my case to make a point. Making a point in the case that I just maybe right with the correct view making other views wrong.  Based on my up bringing, I felt that other people are not in the right, that they are the misguided for the reasons I would have like to point out. What is the point of defending myself? Really, because I want some kind of reward for being in the right, for being correct, simply because I am? Should get a reward or the sorry for trespassing on what greatness I suppose I own? Maybe.

Anyway, defending one's honor is not something we must achieve in life. There is no power in that. Jesus Himself the King of Kings was Himself wrongfully hung on a cross but never once did He make a case for Himself. Not once ever defending Himself. He didn't have to. His Spirit spoke for Himself. He did not need to defend His own case. His case was to bring Salvation to those who would believe.

Yes admittedly, I wish, I could say that I could step back and watch God go to work, sometimes I can and sometimes I wish I could help Him out. Maybe defend myself, my case once in a while. Maybe it would feel good to say what is really on my mind to bring people to justice for all the people who have wronged me, like the women who fired me without warning as I was on my way to my Nanny Job after I had just asked to have the week off a month in advance only to discover indirectly that someone else was hired in my place with an even better looking car than the one I had. I would have liked to see that women lose a few jobs maybe she would understand what it is to be unjustly dismissed from a job that was bring me income.

Trust me when I say I would have liked to blow up her phone with a whole lot of reasons as to why she was being unjust. Maybe even plead for my case but she wasn't someone you could plead a case to. I wasn't the Nanny she was looking for and so that was that. Instead after long time talks with God I decided to forgive her. I did, believe it or not I sure did! I sent her a text a few long weeks later saying, "I forgive you." I didn't think it would help me not one bit but later on down the road I could see it did.

Forgiveness isn't about us getting healing for us as it learning about the Heart of God loving those who we would rather dismiss for no good for nothing well, you know. Learning to see those we would like to see fall off the face of the earth like Jesus sees them is a beautiful story in the making. I have had to forgive many times over and over and love like Jesus loves. When I have learn to love like Jesus I let go of them and instead give them to God to worry over and love on. This way I am free of them from my thought life and I can sleep comfortably at night while on the other hand I can see just how much Jesus loves them and they just can't see it for themselves. So I pray for their encounter with God.


God knows how to paint the picture best. I like to think I would like to help out but I am not much of a help. I think I am but sometimes I need to let God do the painting while I watch!!! Actually it just like meeting a painter who is painting in the park and he is just a stranger you hardly know but he is kind when he paints you want to be able to see what all he is painting but you can't see it all yet but some how you just know when the painter is done the painting will come out looking beautiful. He does this with our lives and with those who when we look at them we don't think their lives could be become anything but God always can see what magnificent creation that they are even when we can't. We need to pray for our enemy's and do good to those who do not.

Right now I am also learning to love someone that is very challenging to love, someone who is very much not an easy person to love but when I think of my rights of what I might say to win my case. I also realize that their is a time and place to open ones mouth and speak and a time to remain silent and let God work things out. He knows what is best after all. But that is why God is so good. I think if we thought we had that kind of power to win over every battle or to begin or end one we would be prideful because we believed we solved what really only God is able to do. Would we really feel we need God if we didn't need to rely on Him?


I think so often the power to love and forgive also gives us the power and ability to make the choice and decide to rely on God for the need of that forgiveness not only for ourselves but for us to be able to give it as God gives it to us. Only God loving through us is more powerful than anything else we ourselves believe we are capable of on our own. And even if we could defend our case all the time and start and end wars on our own terms with our words and without care, in the end does it make us feel any better? did we get a resolve or are we still left empty and striving for more. Only forgiveness can fill an empty place. Love is more powerful. It fills even the deepest of voids. And leaves a bitter heart starved and a hungry heart filled. Love washes away a multitude of sins and begins again a new.

We all have a story one that each face and each person has, get to know the faces in the crowd, know their stories and pass the love you have on. Not forgiving and needing to defend ones self or jump into the arena of life where one needs to create the strife or the war that wars within us to gain the affirmations of settling within ones self the finite definition of having achieved the end result of having revenge on those who have done us wrong is nothing but a self gratification that we have won something. Instead let God have the final word and you be God's love. God's love far more satisfying then the end result of gaining what only you think for a moment would be a rewarding emotion.

Sometimes love and quiet spirit a steadfast heart and a warm and loving way is the best way rather than to fight a losing case. God is always watching over His children to see that we are humble in spirit and not that we have to let people walk all over us but love does pave the way to better roads ahead rather then one paved with a spirit that is always striving. God's love does not leave us empty. It always leaves us filled and in his timing he does bring the ultimate justice that we could never administer.