When Someone Gives You A Hard Time, Respond With The Energies of Prayer

Matthew 5:44 (The Message)

 "You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that."

Thoughts: Sometimes, it's hard living what the Bible says, especially "loving your enemies." Everyone of us experienced being hated by people even if we didn't do anything to them. Sometimes, we are misunderstood by our actions and there are people who are offended by us without us knowing it. As the saying goes, " You can not please everyone." Some people would hate our guts so they would hate us as well. Some people would call us names that somehow would trigger us to respond negatively. I myself had experienced reacting negatively to people who called me names and i regretted it. So what is the best response to people who give us a hard time...people who hate us even if we don't do anything to them...people who misunderstand us for our actions? 

In today's verses, we can see there that the best response to our enemies is prayer. I've tried it myself and it's effective. Not only that God would remove all the pains  and bitterness in your heart that those people have caused you but God would also make sure that you would be taken cared of in that situation...he would make sure that those people would stop giving you a hard time and God  would take care of your situation.

Ephesians 6:12 (New Living Translation) says, "For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places."

Again, when someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer. God is there to take care of you.

Copyright © 2010 by Mari Ann Rose "Mariah" F. Gadapan . All rights reserved worldwide.

All  devotional thoughts on this site are my own writings. I've learned them during my personal devotional time.If in case u want to use this material, please ask permission from me first or at least, acknowledge that i wrote it and it came from this site.

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