Enjoying God - Week #3

Chapter Three: The Wounded Heart

As I’m reading through this book now, I’m struck with the reality that a big part of what the author is teaching in this book is the need that we humans have for “storge” love. Storge love is the foundational family love that a baby must have if he or she is going to relate healthily to other loves that will come later into his/her life. This is the foundational love that comes primarily through the gracious mother who loves the child unconditionally before he or she has ever done anything to “deserve” to be loved and accepted. (See C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves for teaching on four basic loves, among which is storge love.)

It’s this unconditional and never-ending acceptance and enjoyment of the little one that lays the foundation for future relationships and other loves. If a child misses out on this early in life for whatever reason, he is more prone to falling into illicit relationships when he gets older because he is lacking the core sense of being that makes him know he is a person of significance and doesn't need to find his identity in someone else. When there is a solid sense of being, one isn’t as easily seduced by substitutes (drugs, alcohol, perverted sex, even work and ministry, etc.) that come along to fill the longing for love and significance that all of us humans have.

The heart of God the Father is fascinating and intriguing to me, because in it are all the wonderful virtues of a mother as well as those of a father. And so the ability in God to fully accept and own me as His daughter (no matter how weak and immature I am) is what we see in a mother’s unconditional love but also what we should see in a human father’s unconditional acceptance and enjoyment of his child.

As the child grows up, boundaries that are established in order to bring discipline and responsibility into his life are constructive and life-giving when set up within the context of unconditional love and acceptance.

In this chapter on the wounded heart, S.J. Hill addresses the failure of human fathers primarily (though it’s true to a lesser extent with mothers as well) to unconditionally love and enjoy their children and how that impacts the child’s view of God the Father. After giving a specific example, the author says, “Because the teenager had a bad experience with his own father, he was unable to grasp the goodness, kindness and loving nature of the heavenly Father...Ideally, our experience with our father should point us to the heart of a greater Father who loves His children more than any earthly father ever could.”

As I continue to mature in God’s love, I’m more impressed with how important it is that we really know God the Father. I am going slowly through the Gospel of John now, taking the time to allow the Holy Spirit to apply the words of Jesus to me personally and let them seep down deeply into me as I say “yes” in agreement with what He is saying to and about me. Right now I am in John 14 where Jesus is saying that He wants to introduce us to His Father; what He says about being the Way to the Father suggests that knowing the Father is the ultimate experience a human can have and is where true healing takes place. (Philip confessed to Jesus, “Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied”, in this portion.)

(I heard the story of Clay McLean who was healed and cleansed of homosexuality; in his journey as a young Christian, He loved Jesus but one day when the Lord said to him, “Clay, I want to introduce you to my Father,” he panicked because of his experience with his earthly father.)

In this chapter, S.J. Hill speaks of several types of earthly fathers that are not unusual even within the Christian community of faith and points how that can impact our view of the heavenly Father:
1) The Performance-Oriented Father – this is the father who expresses his approval only after his child has accomplished something of significance. “While our achievements should be recognized and celebrated, they should never be a prerequisite for receiving parental love and affirmation…The performance-driven mentality eventually spills over into our personal relationship with Christ. Initially, as young Christians we may sense God’s love and experience the simplicity of relationship, but it doesn’t take long before we think we’re not doing enough.” Speaking of his own experience as the son of a pastor, Hill says that “even when I hadn’t done anything wrong, I felt guilty for not doing all the things I believed I should be doing…I used to believe that to experience success in my Christian life, I had to work harder. But I discovered that the key to spiritual success was not strenuous work, but spiritual rest and intimacy with my heavenly Father…”
2) The Passive Father – a passive father appears distant and rarely gets involved in the personal affairs of the child’s life; he isn’t very affectionate and seldom shows his emotions. If we have had this kind of father, we may believe that God doesn’t care about the little things of our life and consequently, we run to Him only in emergencies. This hinders us from a truly intimate relationship with Him because we fear He’s not that interested in us.
3) The Punitive Father – this kind of father places demands on us that break the child’s spirit. “An authoritarian father tends to rule with a mixture of fear and guilt…(he) believes that if he reminds his children of their faults, they will be motivated to try harder…If you grew up with a father or mother who was demanding and abusive, you may have difficulty receiving the love of the heavenly Father; you may tend to think He is always looking for some fault in you. As a result, it will be difficult for you to picture Him smiling over you in loving approval.”

Does God have a Good Heart?
The strongholds of rejection and fear that get set up within us because of wrong parenting can only be broken through coming to grips with the inaccurate concepts that we have in our minds about God.

“The human heart longs to know God and be known by Him. But like a lover who has been wronged, we guard our hearts against future disappointments…Wrong ideas about God are not automatically flushed from our minds when we are first saved. We must continually reshape our way of thinking through an accurate knowledge of God’s heart and character (II Cor. 10:4,5; Rom. 12:2).

Satan’s goal is to keep us in the dark about God’s true feelings and intentions for us…

If we want our hearts to be captivated by the beauty and splendor of God, we must aggressively attack these demonic strongholds. We must allow the truth of God’s Word not only to wash our minds of fleshly, immature ways of thinking but also to tenderize our hearts so we can walk in the freedom of God’s love. It’s only as we understand how God feels about us that the strongholds of the enemy will be overthrown in our hearts and minds.”

In closing I want to underscore what the author says about the importance of understanding how God feels about us. I’m discovering that one of the most effective ways to be healed of emotional brokenness is to experience personally the wholeness of God’s emotions; we begin to touch His emotions towards us in adoring prayer. In other words, prayer that looks into His face, listens for His words of affirmation, says “yes” to what He says (in spite of what my guts scream out in reaction), then obeys anything He may say to me to do. After doing this, do it again…and again…and again. His Word and His Spirit will do the work that we cannot do, as we simply lay our heart before Him and reach out for Him; but it takes time and perseverance to dislodge deeply ingrained mindsets (strongholds), so don’t give up easily!

It helps to pray a lot in your prayer language (tongues) if you have that gift; it is a powerful means of cooperating with the Holy Spirit in the strengthening of your “inner man” (Eph. 3:16). Singing the Word and fasting are other ways of accelerating the work of the Spirit in reversing inaccurate ways of viewing God.

The Lord bless you and keep you and cause His face to shine on you and be gracious to you… this biblical prayer reflects the understanding that the human heart longs for the gracious smile of the Father, just as the infant looks into the mother’s gracious eyes for her approval. And so I pray this prayer for you this week as you pause periodically to look and listen for His affirming word that you are His child, unconditionally accepted in the Beloved and enjoyed by Him!

For next week we’ll read chapter four, The Audience of One.

Enjoying God - Week #2

Chapter two is entitled The Divine Romance. I’m “creeping” through the Psalms now and am using a wonderful book by Patrick Reardon (Christ in the Psalms) as I go through them. This week I’m in Psalm 45 and read the following commentary that fits this chapter perfectly:

“'The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son' (Matthew 22:2), that marriage’s consummation being the definitive aim of our destiny, and all of history constituting the courtship that prepares and anticipates the yet undisclosed hour of its fulfillment. Thus the end of time is announced by the solemn proclamation: “Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him.” (Matthew 25:6)
This interpretation of history as the preparation for a royal wedding ceremony is so pervasive and obvious in Holy Scripture that we Christians, taking it so much for granted, may actually overlook it or give it little thought. Indeed, in this modern materialistic world there is a distinct danger that we too may forget that the present life is but the preparation for another…
To counter such forgetfulness of our future, therefore, God’s Holy Writ repeatedly reminds us of that coming wedding day of the King’s Son…"

When we pause to look at the story of the Bible, we can all recognize that it’s a love story from beginning to end, and the more I see it through the lens of the Bridegroom God, the more I understand, not only the Scriptures, but also the reasons behind why God does what He does, even when it doesn’t make sense to the natural mind. It helps me understand better why we humans are easily caught in addictions of all sorts – we were made for pleasure and fascination so will do anything to satisfy those desires if our hearts aren’t fascinated with God. This is as true of Christian believers as it is of the world.

S.J. Hill, referring to the battle for Helen of Troy (I’m assuming you know the story), says,

“…like Helen of Troy, we won’t return to an eternal love affair with our Bridegroom King without a battle. Many of us carry baggage into the Christian experience that has never been unpacked. Rejection, insecurity, and fear stand against the divine romance in such stark contrast that it’s hard for us to fully grasp the heart of the Gospel...We’re reluctant to open ourselves fully to God because we don’t want to become too vulnerable.”

Relationship with the Divine Romancer
I so appreciate the author’s taking us further back than Eden in his attempt to help us understand the heart and nature of our God. He points out that the divine romance did not begin in Eden but has been who God is forever in relationship. “…before man was created, the Father was already in relationship with Someone.” (Prov. 8:27-31 gives us a picture of this eternal relationship: “Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” This is referring to Jesus and shows both His delightful relationship with the Father and His delight in mankind.) And in John 14 and John 17 Jesus expresses His desire for us to be with Him forever and to have the same love relationship with humans as He and His Father have.

This all sounds great on paper but I am discovering that the full embracing and receiving of this kind of extravagant and unconditional love is offensive to my flesh because it cuts across the grain of the deeply embedded desire in fallen humans to somehow deserve to be loved.

The book quotes St. Augustine’s eloquent prayer of desire: “I came to love you late, O Beauty so ancient and so new; I came to love you late…You called me, you shouted to me, you broke past my deafness. You bathed me with your light, you wrapped me in your splendor, you sent my blindness reeling. You gave out such a delightful fragrance, and I drew it in and came breathing hard after you. I tasted, and it made me hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned to know your peace.”

The greatest demonstration of the love of God for us is the cross. Referring again to Helen of Troy, he says, “The Father did more than launch a thousand ships to get you back. He gave His unique Son – the One He delighted in – even before time began.”

This chapter tells a story that Soren Kierkegaard told about a king who fell in love with a humble maiden; everyone trembled before his power, but his heart melted with love for this maiden. Being king tied his hands from being able to declare his love for her; he could bring her to the palace and give her all that accompanies such a position and she would not dare resist him; but would she love him freely? He didn’t want a cringing slave but a lover; he wanted her to forget his was king and she a simple maiden and to let shared love bridge the gulf between them.

John Eldridge continues with this story: “The king clothes himself as a beggar and renounces his throne in order to win her hand. The Incarnation, the life and the death of Jesus, answers once and for all the question, ‘What is God’s heart toward me?’”

There is too much more in this chapter to try to get it in this posting, so I’m simply going to list several quotes out of the chapter and make a closing remark.

The Bridal Paradigm in Scripture
* (Speaking of the last days)…She (the Bride) will be empowered by holy romance with her bridegroom God. From her sense of spiritual romance, she will view everything differently. Because this bride is lost in the spiritual pleasure and the delight of lovesickness, she will interpret the events of the last days through the lens of love. As God’s temporal judgments disrupt the human race, the end-time bride will see God’s hand of mercy in them…

* God wants lovers who will submit to Him from their hearts…He longs for a lovesick bride. He is looking for those who will keep themselves unstained by the world and will save themselves for Him.

* Through the poetic, romantic language of Scripture, the Bridegroom God is trying to capture our imagination…He will call us out of immaturity and weakness and correct us with His love. He will remove the areas of sin in our lives so we can enjoy Him as the Husband of our hearts and live with Him forever.

* There is nothing more invigorating to the human spirit than the revelation of a Bridegroom God who has intense, pure, passionate desires for us. Something deeply significant takes place in us when in our weakness and immaturity we feel wanted and pursued.

The Divine Kiss of God
* The dominant theme in the Song of Solomon is the revelation of the passionate affections in God’s personality…The divine kiss is a metaphor for the deepest affections that God can give to the human spirit.

* By its very nature, the divine kiss empower you to share God with others. It enables you to run with God…

* The primary way (God communicates His kiss to us) is through meditating on the Scriptures.

A Jealous Romancer
* Exodus 34:14 It’s interesting that God would name Himself “Jealous.” There is something within the nature of God that burns with jealousy for the undivided love and affections of His people.

* God is also emotional. Within the depths of His being he experiences extraordinary passions, including jealousy…Holy jealousy is an intense passion to protect a love relationship that’s priceless and to avenge it when it’s fractured. God’s holy anger at any threat to this relationship is in direct proportion to the burning fire of His love.

The chapter concludes with thoughts on repentance and on man’s free will to choose love, which God will never violate.

It’s been in recent years that my eyes have been opened to the bridal paradigm in Scriptures; seeing God in this light has changed me deeply. Taking the time to listen to His loving affirmations of me and agreeing with Him has brought wonderful healing and strengthening of my inner being. In this process of experiencing the “divine kiss”, I have gained new confidence and no longer live my life dominated by fear of man and needing people’s approval.

I have always loved Him deeply but now I’m confident in His love for me; now I love Him more than ever and without the insecurity that there was when I attempted to love Him without the ongoing revelation of His unchanging love for me. The freedom and joy and spontaneity that comes when this reality dawns on a person is hard to describe!

Because I know that He loves and likes/enjoys me, I love and enjoy Him and others more and find myself free from judgment of myself and of others (even secret inner judgments that hide deep within).

I encourage you to begin to take regular time simply to listen to the Word of God, especially His expressions of love and affection, and just say “yes” to what He is saying to you and soak in that a long time until it penetrates your heart and spirit. If you are interested in Scriptures that are particularly about the emotions of God towards His own, I would be glad to send you some references.

Holy Spirit, You Who love the Father and Jesus passionately and purely, come and reveal God’s love to us by Your grace and power. Win our hearts so that we may love Him radically and to the death, for the sake of Jesus and those for whom He died. Thank You that You hear and answer our prayer!

Next week’s reading is chapter three, The Wounded Heart. Have a great week enjoying the God who enjoys you!

Enjoying God - Week #1

The Lord bless you! I trust you are expanding in your capacity to receive His love as you continue to mature in Him. A favorite prayer of mine that I often pray is that of St. Augustine: “The house of my soul is small; do Thou enter in and enlarge it.”

The more I open my heart to freely receive the love of God in Christ Jesus, the more aware I am of how offensive God’s love (the real thing) is to my flesh! When I pause long enough to let Him tell me how He loves me even in my worst moments, the flesh rises up to say, “Yes, but…” and then goes on to protest why it can’t literally be true that He likes and enjoys and wants my company.

So the next book that we’re just starting this week could be problematic for us, but I have chosen it because of my own experience in recent years of understanding the radical nature of the love of God, seen most clearly in the cross of Christ Jesus.

I’ll start with a line from the foreword of S.J. Hill’s book: “He has designed you with the characteristics and personality to touch His heart in a way that no other human being has ever been able to do. It’s a simple truth. But if it doesn’t dominate your spirit, then most of what you’ll do will come out of duty rather than delight…” (Mike Bickle)

Chapter One is entitled The Drawing of the Human Heart. This book is very simple, and I’m praying that the Holy Spirit will take its simple but foundational truths and stop us in our tracks once in awhile; I encourage you, as I have before, to take this slowly and allow yourself to “soak” in these bedrock realities, without which so many of us as Christians live stressed-out lives in these days of massive pressures coming from all sides.

Hill quotes Blaise Pascal: “There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, by God Himself.”

Each human personality is an infinite abyss – you are and I am; because of our sin and fallenness and the sin of others against us, we spend our lives trying to fill that infinite void with finite things and people, what Hill calls “lesser loves.”

I have become convinced that without ongoing revelation of the relentless and unchanging love of God for me always (not just when I’m doing well), I cannot break free from chasing after second loves which I look to for affirmation and for my identity.

The author says, “The ache deep inside your being is a blessing. It invites you to something greater than you could ever fathom: the lifelong pursuit of knowing and enjoying God.” That ache is the desire to be fully known and fully loved; the good news is that we are fully known and loved, but the scheme of the evil one is to keep this truth hidden from us, even those of us who are in Christ.

One basic Christian reality that has become real to me in recent years is that I love God because He loved me first. I have “known” this truth (I John 4:19) for most of my life but am now beginning to “know” it. Much of my life and service for God has been unconsciously based on my love and commitment to Him rather than on His love and commitment to me. But without knowing at the core of my being that He loves and enjoys me, I cannot hope to freely love and enjoy Him. And so the author underscores the reality that GOD is the Initiator/Seeker, not man, in this love affair. This is unlike other religions that have man seeking a disinterested god(s).

“There is a place within you – a deep place – that only God can touch. It’s in that place that God’s echoing invitation emerges and penetrates your spirit. It’s the invitation not only to pursue Him but also to enjoy Him. This call comes out of an even deeper place, a deeper longing, in the heart of God. As much as you may want Him, He wants you more.”

Using the story of Helen of Troy, Hill talks of the fact that there is a war being fought over you and me; the war is between God and the enemy – God in Christ has fought for you; that’s how valuable you are to Him.

He goes on to say that today’s Church suffers from spiritual boredom “because believers were never made for a program, an institution, or a weekly pew-warming ceremony. Christians were never made to be satisfied by a three-point outline that contains just enough advice to get over the ‘hump’ of the week. The human heart was made for passion. It was created for relationship. It was designed to experience the fullness of God.”

In our state of dissatisfaction, we go after adventure in many forms. Some Christians find adventure in sports or camping or missions, etc., while others look for adventure in romance novels and movies, etc. While some of these activities aren’t evil in their rightful place, today’s western Christian culture has lost its way in its pursuit of substitutes for what our hearts really long for.

The thing that is filling my heart with faith for His Church these days is that God is jealous over His Bride, and I believe that wherever He finds a hungry heart, He begins to do whatever it takes to win our wholehearted love for Him. I am witnessing this among Christians everywhere I go these days – hunger for the true God. The jealous Bridegroom is warring for His Bride and awakening desire for Him in our weariness over chasing second loves that have left us disappointed and devastated.

There’s a good prayer by S.J. Hill at the end of this chapter that I encourage you to pray (or pray your own prayer of saying “yes” to God); but I want to close with the prayer quoted by the saint of long ago, Julian of Norwich:

“God, of your goodness, give me yourself, for you are enough for me. If I ask anything less, I know I shall continue to want. Only in you I have everything.”

God bless you this week with the certainty that He is with you and is not discouraged with His good work in you! He knows He is able to win and woo us into wholehearted love and enjoyment of Him through revealing to us His wholehearted love and enjoyment of us. All He needs is our “yes” to His work!

Let’s read chapter two for next week, “The Divine Romance.”

Wounds that Heal - Final Week (#10)

In this 10th and final chapter of Wounds that Heal, Stephen Seamands writes about the beauty of the cross and the scars of Jesus. Reading this chapter reminds me of a wonderful book that I want to recommend to you: The Evidential Power of Beauty by Thomas Dubay. It’s a scholarly book but worth the effort. In it the author speaks of beauty and its power to affect us toward God; he presents many kinds of beauty in creation, but he says that the supreme beauty of all things beautiful is the crucifixion of Jesus.

This, as Seamands says in the beginning of this chapter, is the great stumbling block for all other religions. “The figure of the crucified Christ, says Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘is a very painful image to me. It does not contain joy or peace, and this does not do justice to Jesus.’”

But those of us who know Him, glory in the cross: “Around AD 200, Tertullian, a North African theologian, described Christian practice like this: ‘At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign (the cross).’”

After Christ’s death, God removed all evidence of the violence done to Jesus except the scars (John 20:20). A poem written after WW I by Edward Shillito ends with this final verse:

The other gods were strong; but Thou was weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

The reason Christians glory in the cross is that “we believe God’s solution to the problem of suffering and evil is not to eliminate it, nor be insulated from it, but to participate in it and then, having participated in it, to transform it into his instrument for redeeming the world...God overcomes evil not through passive resignation or brute strength, not through coercion or a dazzling display of force, but through the power of suffering love. God uses suffering redemptively to accomplish His will and purpose in the world. That’s why Christ’s scars are still there even when He returns with a glorified body after His triumphant resurrection. And they will always be there, but with one crucial difference: now they are radiant scars…bearers of divine glory, radiating the light of God’s presence, which tranforms everything it encounters. His scars are now instruments of healing (Isa. 53:5).”

Strength Made Perfect in Weakness
The previous 3 chapters have dealt with what the cross says about healing our emotional hurts, and it can be summed up in three words: embracing, forgiving, loving. “The cross reveals that healing comes through embracing, not avoiding, the pain of our hurts; through forgiving, not resenting, those who have wronged us; and through loving, not hating, those who have treated us like enemies.”

The author suggests that in the light of the Lord’s radiant scars, there is a fourth word: offering.

The Apostle Paul learned to offer his weakness (scars) to God for His glory (II Cor. 12:7). The Greek word for “thorn” can mean “either a stake that actually pegged a person to the ground or a splinter that was constantly irritating. According to H. Minn, it conveyed ‘the notion of something sharp and painful which sticks deep in the flesh and in the will of God defies extraction. The effect of its presence was to cripple Paul’s enjoyment of life, and to frustrate his full efficiency by draining his energies.’”

So whatever Paul’s thorn was, it was a hindrance to “his full efficiency by draining his energies.” God chose not to remove this hindrance but rather to perfect His power through Paul’s weakness; and Paul eventually, after begging to be freed of it, was able to reach a place of saying, “I am content with weakness…” (II Cor. 12:10).

How Our Scars Become Radiant
We too can reach the place of viewing our emotional scars with the same attitude that Paul viewed his “thorn in the flesh.” But at first in the healing process we must genuinely look at and embrace the pain, honestly face the havoc wreaked in our lives by these wounds; we must view them first as enemies – “messengers of Satan” – sent to destroy us and see them as something to fight against and overcome.

“But”, Seamands says, “there comes a point in the healing process where we are called to face our wounds in a different way, viewing them this time not as enemies but as friends. While recognizing their evil intent, we actually come to glory in them like Paul did because of what they produce in us (weakness) and consequently what they release through us (God’s power). God builds his kingdom on human weakness, not human strength.”

I have seen time after time that the very area in which a person has most suffered, when healed and then offered to God, becomes the area of ministry to others. The decision to offer God our scars for the healing of others isn’t always an easy decision, so the author suggests two things we can do to help us embrace this redemptive step:

1. First, having honestly recognized we’re not ready to offer our wounds to God to use, we must give God permission to bring us to that point….the most important thing we can offer to God is our willingness (but) we will never overcome this resistance by talking ourselves out of it…Jesus must do it. But he needs our permission…The following is a simple prayer that can be made along these lines: “Lord, we want to be able to glory in our weaknesses. We want you to use our wounds. You have permission to do whatever is necessary to bring us to the place where that can happen.”
2. Second, we need to consider our scars in the light of Christ’s radiant scars. "Picture Him standing before us as he stood before his disciples that first Easter. Like he did then, he shows us the scars from the wounds he received on the cross. Now, however, light floods out from them, transforming everything it touches and filling them with life. As we gaze at his wounds and consider ours in relation to his, we can offer our wounds to him, asking him to touch them with his and to transform them into radian scars.”

The Lord be with you as you open your heart to Him more and more. He is the Good Shepherd who will shepherd your heart, leading you to the places He has prepared for you; and even if some of those places may uncover buried hurts and wounds, the green pastures and still waters of His presence and His wounds will enable you to face them and ultimately offer them to Him for blessing to others and for His glory.

Next week we will begin the book Enjoying God by S.J.Hill. So read chapter one (The Drawing of the Human Heart) this week before my posting, if possible. I’m finding that the more I dare to freely receive God’s unrelenting and unconditional love, the more I realize how offensive His love is to the world, the flesh (my flesh), and the devil. My prayer, as we read this book, is that the Holy Spirit will open our understanding more fully to the radical love of God for weak people and that in that revelation, we will be confident in Him and be empowered to love Him and others. Have a blessed week in Him!

Wounds that Heal - Week #9

Last week we looked at the issue of forgiveness in the light of the cross. (Thanks to Joan for the great job of standing in for me on chapter eight!) Stephen Seamands’ treatment of this topic is wonderful; forgiveness is absolutely imperative to experiencing true healing, so it is worth reading and rereading this chapter, if need be.

This week’s reading is on chapter nine, Love Your Enemies. The author says at the start that “It is not enough to just forgive our enemies; Jesus calls us to love them as well. (Luke 6:27,28) By ‘enemies’ I particularly have in mind those who have inflicted emotional pain and injury on us. We may never have viewed them as enemies before. In most cases they have been parents, siblings, spouses or close friends…In many cases, their ‘friendly fire’ was far deadlier than any enemy fire, so the command to love our enemies is particularly appropriate to them.”

Jesus practiced what He preached about loving our enemies. I Peter 2:18-25 and Romans 12:14-21 are two portions that help us learn how to do this. In Peter we see how Jesus showed love for His enemies while on the cross; in Romans we see what it means for us to love our enemies.

When He was Abused (I Peter 2:18-25)
Writing to Christian slaves who were being treated wrongly, Peter points to Jesus as an example of right enduring of suffering:

1. “When he was abused, he did not return abuse” (vs. 23). Throughout the Passion ordeal, Jesus underwent intense and ongoing verbal abuse (Luke 22:65; 23:11; Matthew 27:29,30; Mark 15:29; 15:31, 32). Isaiah 53:7 tells us that the verbal abuse failed to arouse retaliation from Jesus.
2. “When he suffered, he did not threaten” (vs. 23). Jesus could have called on angelic help and yet did not even threaten to take advantage of His powers.
3. “…he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly” (vs. 23). Jesus left justice in the hands of His Father.
4. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross” (vs. 24). Beyond the example He set for us in His suffering, Jesus atoned for sin. “As he hung on the cross, Jesus took on himself the punishment for our sins…However…he did more than set us free from the negative consequences of our past sins…Peter goes on to spell out three positive benefits of the cross for our lives now":
o Righteous living: “free from sins, we might live for righteousness” (vs. 24)
o Healing: “by his wounds you have been healed” (vs. 24)
o Restoration: “now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls”

On the cross Jesus provided a whole new opportunity of life for His enemies! “Christ’s example on the cross in bearing evil and blessing evildoers becomes the basis for what we are commanded to do in relation to those who have injured us.”

Bearing Evil (Romans 12:14-21)
So what does bearing evil mean for us in practical terms?

Seamands makes a point of saying that bearing evil doesn’t mean “disregarding or glossing over the evil done to us.” According to the passage in Romans 12, not only are we to not repay evil and to overcome evil, we are also told to hate evil. So we are to both love and hate; in fact, it seems that for love to be genuine, we must have a hatred for evil.

The author quotes John Stott: “Whenever love is ‘sincere’…it is morally discerning. It never pretends that evil is anything else or condones it. Compromise with evil is incompatible with love. Love seeks the highest good of others and therefore hates the evil that spoils it. God hates evil because his love is holy love; we must hate it too.”

The desire for vengeance in itself is not inherently evil. What is evil is when vengeance is wrongly done and wrongly timed.

Romans 12:17 says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.” This, as well as I Peter 3:9 and Matthew 5:39, stresses that bearing evil means refusing to retaliate…Martin Luther King Jr. says, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate…Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that…”

By refusing to retaliate we actually “break the chain reaction of evil in the world, and we also lessen evil’s influence in our own lives.”

The Lord says later in Romans 12 (verse 19) that vengeance belongs to Him, so while the desire for justice and revenge is not inherently evil, we are forbidden the role of executioner, according to Scripture. God will repay; He alone knows all that’s involved and can make the proper judgment.

Blessing the Evildoer
Verse 21 of Romans 12 tells us that we overcome evil by doing good, so what should that look like? The author suggests that doing good to those who have committed evil against us involves both words and deeds, speaking words of blessing but also serving.

In this section of the chapter, Seamands underscores a very important point about what doing good may often look like: it will often mean walking in tough love rather than in sentimentality. He gives the example of doing good by standing up to a dictatorial father who insists on controlling his grown children or refusing to make decisions on behalf of a weak and indecisive mother so that she has to make her own decisions.

The author quotes Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III in their book on bold love: “In many cases, (such) bold love will unnerve, offend, hurt, disturb, and compel the one who is loved to deal with the internal disease that is robbing him and others of joy.”

In my own experience of learning to stand up straight before the Lord (in contrast with bending into other people to please them), I have discovered that when one person in a relationship starts to fear the Lord rather than man, it forces the other(s) to make some kind of decision, because they can no longer manipulate you. “Returning good for evil often surprises and stuns our enemies…the unwelcome exposure is actually a gracious gift to them…”

God’s Way will Work
Stephen Seamands ends this chapter with an amazing story of Jacob DeShazer, a bombardier in the US Army, who through a series of events during WW I, was taken captive by the Japanese and tortured. He hated the Japanese. But while a POW, he encountered the Lord Jesus and gave his heart to Him. In his reading of the Scriptures, he discovered the truth of forgiveness and loving one’s enemies and set his heart to go God’s way, resulting in the power of God being released in him to forgive and even love his captors. This radically changed his hatred into genuine care for the Japanese, and after the war and his release, he dedicated 30 years to missionary service to Japan, leading many to the Lord. Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who had commanded the Japanese air squadron that bombed Pearl Harbor, got hold of DeShazer’s testimony that had been put into leaflet form and eventually became a Christian and a friend of DeShazer, traveling with him at times to witness and preach the Gospel.

Seamands makes a statement at the end that I believe is so important to grasp: “He (Christ) never asks us to do anything without providing the power to do it. As we choose to love our enemies, Christ’s love for them will be imparted to us.”

This is supernatural love and power that flows through us to our enemies when we make the choice (the emotions follow later) to love those who have injured us. May the grace and power of the Holy Spirit through the work of the cross rest on us as we open our hearts to walk His way, whether it be in relation to major injuries or those that seem small. The small ones, if not dealt with, can accumulate and become major in time.

Have a blessed week in Him! Next week we’ll finish this book with chapter ten, Radiant Scars. The following week we’ll start a new book, Enjoying God, by S.J. Hill.