Matthew 5:43-48 part 3
Another form of unforgiveness came to my mind during the week and it is important to talk about it. A friend and I have contact with an organisation. I have always found the administration staff friendly and helpful. My friend has had problems with the organisation and the office manager and has felt that the administration staff were not friendly or helpful. I had not seen the receptionist for some time and discovered recently that she was on sick leave being treated for cancer. Thinking my friend would be as concerned as I was, I told her. However, her response shocked me. She was actually happy about it. Her reasoning was that it was good to see people getting “their just rewards”. I found this horrifying. This was such a horrible thing to say. I have never delighted to see a person I don’t like suffering from a tragedy or illness. As a Christian, Jesus has transformed my mind so that I care for all people in those circumstances. Yet this friend professed to have a “Christian faith”. How do you reconcile a love for Jesus with a desire for vengeance that delights in seeing another person in a terrible situation? No matter how much another person has hurt you, you should still feel sorrow for them when they suffer like that. They may never know you feel for them, but you know and Jesus knows. The important thing about loving your enemy is that you seek to forgive them and you definitely resist the temptation to exact revenge against them. When you seek revenge and refuse to forgive you cut yourself off from Jesus and open the door to bitterness. Bitterness eats away at you and pushes you further from Jesus. In bitterness you are easy pray for satan and easy pray to be used by him to hurt others.
So love your enemies and seek to forgive those who hurt you and never delight in the bad things that happen to them.

Matthew 5:43-48 part 2
Before moving on from these verses I want to relate something that happened to me this morning. In a previous blog I mentioned an incident where a man had been bullying and tormenting my family and I had stood my ground lovingly and respectfully and had stopped his behaviour. This saga is not over, as the man and his family still live in the same area. Today I encountered members of his family as I drove up the road to my house. When I saw them, I felt a surge of anger and hatred at these people. I have been praying for them for years and “choosing to forgive” but I am still not at the point where I can totally relinquish my hold on my anger at the way they treated my family (a combination of protective mother lion, pride and fear that it is not all over). Until I reach that point I will still struggle to forgive. So a war was being waged in my mind as I drove past them. “I hate them” v “I must forgive them because Jesus requires it”. Subsequently I arrived home and spent some time in prayer about them and my unwillingness to relinquish that last little bit of anger. When I had finished praying I went outside to hang out my washing. As I looked up to peg the clothes to the line I saw two majestic pelicans high up in the sky soaring in large circles on the upper air currents. For fifteen minutes I watched these majestic birds as they slowly worked their way across the sky, rising higher and higher on the air currents. I marvelled at this beautiful vision of God’s majesty. As they disappeared from view, I was reminded of something I read some time ago about eagles. The eagle soars on those upper air currents too. Frequently in storms the air currents rise higher above the storm and the eagle can ride the storm out way above the weather. This is why the Bible talks of God being our eagle and giving us the strength of the Eagle. Here are three passages from the Bible. They are well worth reading and meditating on.
Isaiah 40:28-31 speaks of God renewing our strength so that we may soar on eagle wings.
Psalm 103 speaks of our strength being restored like the eagle. A lot of the eagle’s strength stems from its ability to soar above storms. With God we can do the same. Therefore the source of our strength is God.
Deuteronomy 31:1-14 speaks of God’s guidance and protection of His people. He was like the parent eagle who feeds and protects its young and, if need be, carries its young to a new place of safety.
As the pelicans soared out of sight it occurred to me that the eagle has another advantage. From that high above the ground it gains a different perspective on what is happening down below. Sometimes, when we are caught up in the trials of life, we lose that overall perspective. That is when we need our Heavenly Father to give us that perspective. Part of that search is the willingness to forgive, even when we don’t want to let go of our “right” to retaliate. Seeking Jesus and expressing the willingness to forgive allows Jesus to change us. In my experience He often reveals things about the other person so that I can understand the motivation for their behaviour. When I understand the pain they feel, it is easier for me to forgive. Sometimes unforgiveness is about a fear that we are still in danger from our enemy. That is hard and requires great trust in God to be able to fight our battles for us. I have had Him do that time and time again, yet I still want to hold on to that need to defend myself. So back to prayer and choosing to forgive. I trust that I will forgive these people in time. In the meantime I sit tight under the wings of my mighty eagle, Jesus, and try to open my eyes to see His perspective.

Matthew 5:43-48 part 1
These verses are a real challenge. We all want to hate those who hate us. It is so hard to love those who are awful to us. Despite this, Jesus is telling those who wish to be disciples that they must love their enemies. This is not actually new, after all in a previous blog I mentioned two verses from Proverbs, 25:21 about giving your enemy water if he is thirsty and 24:29 warning people not to do to others as they have done to you. So God had always instructed His people to love their enemies. It is a human failing to fall into the habit of hating our enemies and wishing to seek revenge. This is why we need a reminder of this as much as the Jews of Jesus’ day needed it.
Jesus identifies a number of reasons why we should love our enemies:
. we are children of our father in heaven. Remember the sun God causes to shine, shines on our enemies as well and rain is for all people, good and evil (45).
. what reward is there in only loving those who love you? Where is the sacrifice in service to Jesus? (46)
. how do we set ourselves apart as being servants of Jesus if we behave no differently to those who are servants of satan? The people of the world look at our behaviour as indicative of God. Our behaviour must be better than that of the world or what perceived difference is there in serving God? (46-48) Our lives should shine forth the fruit of the Spirit. Therefore our lives should be full of:
Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
Self control (Galatians 5:22-23)
So we must strive to be as perfect as possible, as God is perfect. In other words we must strive to live Godly lives. (48)
So this is easy right? Wrong. Speaking for myself, I find these verses the most difficult in the Bible. When someone hurts me I don’t want to forgive them. I don’t want to love them. I want them to suffer and know what they have done to me. However, that is my sinful nature speaking and I know that is not what Jesus wants me to do. So I choose to hand my hurt and pain and unforgiveness to Jesus and choose to forgive. I choose to forgive several times a day for years sometimes. I pray for people and wait, because I know that in time God will send the feeling to match my desire. I have spent more hours in prayer over this issue than anything else. I know that pain from my past is one reason I struggle to forgive and my gracious Heavenly Father is healing me of that pain. I look forward to the day when I can forgive easily, when I stop trying to take control of difficult situations and trust God to deal with my enemies and remember Ephesians 4:32 that I must forgive others just as in Christ, God forgave me. Until then I persevere, as we all should.
Dr Russ Harris, who wrote the "Happiness Trap", speaks of the importance of focus on the feelings around a problem. If you feel hurt and angry at someone's behaviour, then when those feelings visit acknowledge them. You cannot stop them coming but you can choose to not make them the centre of your focus where you are more likely to react to them. Instead of your focus being on the hurt and anger, acknowledge those feelings and turn your focus to Jesus and choose how you are going to react. Your inner thoughts may run something like this: "There is the hurt and anger, it is here. How am I going to react to that? I choose to put those feelings to the side and to turn my eyes on Jesus and choose to respond". How you choose to respond is up to you, but it is easier if you are able to stop focusing on the feelings. Of course this is not easy, but it does get easier and gives you space to deal with the feelings you have around things that have happened to you. I find it useful to remember the old chorus
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
 Look full in His wonderful face,
 And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
 In the light of His Glory and Grace."