Begin in
Silence
Make a mental list of the people in your life who are closest to you. Which ones do you love? Which ones do you hate? Do you hate no one? Perhaps there are some whom you can't stand. Pray right now for God to miraculously bless each person on your list.
Make a mental list of the people in your life who are closest to you. Which ones do you love? Which ones do you hate? Do you hate no one? Perhaps there are some whom you can't stand. Pray right now for God to miraculously bless each person on your list.
Scripture
"This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.” 1 John 3:11, 14-15
Reflect
Sometimes
I feel dead. Do you? By dead I mean emotionless, feeling minimal
love for anyone much less for my enemies. I think it's normal to feel dead
sometimes. Love is not an emotion. It's self-extension for the
spiritual good of another.
But hate, wishing ill on another, wanting to see another fail or get what they deserve or suffer what's coming to them or wishing they were never born or hoping they go to hell or putting them down or gossiping things that put them in a bad light or using racial slurs . . . . . Well, that's another thing altogether. Those things make you a murderer and unrepentant murderers get sent away for life, quite different to the eternal life of God, with God and offered to repentant sinners by God.
But hate, wishing ill on another, wanting to see another fail or get what they deserve or suffer what's coming to them or wishing they were never born or hoping they go to hell or putting them down or gossiping things that put them in a bad light or using racial slurs . . . . . Well, that's another thing altogether. Those things make you a murderer and unrepentant murderers get sent away for life, quite different to the eternal life of God, with God and offered to repentant sinners by God.
Prayer
“Lord, Lord, Lord, it is I Lord. I am the hater. I am the murderer. It is I who has hate on my heart. I admit it, repent of it and am willing, even desirous of facing the awful and painful glory of our humiliating yet elevating cleansing and forgiveness. make this hater into a blesser, just as you are a Blesser. Amen."
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
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