Home » Posts tagged 'love your enemies'
Tag Archives: love your enemies
SPIRITUAL WARFARE: FROM THE LEAST TO THE MOST EFFECTIVE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 6, 2025 – Scratch even nominal Christians and you’ll find spiritual warriors directly under the surface. They might not consider themselves spiritual warriors, but every gesture made by self-identified believers is a spear chucked or a bullet ducked in the spiritual realm. We all pray 24/7, whether we realize it or not. Even our dreams are prayers.
For us born-again believers, spiritual warfare is our number one priority. We know only too well (or we should know, because Jesus told us in scripture) how our every word, gesture, and thought contributes to the war effort. And so we strive to focus on God and God only and to do his will and his will only, knowing that all good things flow from him and him only. Whatever we direct to God, we know that God will purify, recycle, personalize, repackage, and send to whoever has it coming, in perfect measure.
LEAST EFFECTIVE
The least effective form of spiritual warfare is directed prayer, whether off-the-cuff or recited. When you specify who is to benefit and how, you restrict the benefit from spilling over to anyone else. In the same way, when you pray against someone (never advisable), you restrict your enmity to a specific target. God takes you at your word and respects your requests, but your prayers still can’t override his justice. If you pray for the benefit of someone God doesn’t want to benefit in that way (because it doesn’t align with his justice), your prayer has no efficacy. Think of David praying for the recovery of his first child with Bathsheba. A full week of fasting and prayer couldn’t override what David and Bathsheba had coming due to their collective sin.
PRAYER REBOUND
Even worse, if you pray specifically against certain people, whether they’ve earned the enmity or not, you run the risk of prayer rebound or bringing on yourself the negative rewards you wished on your prayer target. When Jesus taught us to treat others as we want to be treated, the lesson wasn’t simply to be kind for kindness’s sake; it was to be kind because kindness will then be your reward. In the same way, enmity will be your earned reward if you wish enmity on others. We born-again believers are not exempt from this spiritual law.
MORE EFFECTIVE
A more effective form of spiritual warfare prayer is to open wide the prayer windows and give God broader scope to act on your behalf. Instead of praying, for instance, for your mother’s physical healing, pray that your family be made whole. A prayer for a family to be made whole covers a wider group of people (not just your mother or even your family) and includes both physical and spiritual healing. This amplified approach gives God access to move in the lives of all the people who affect your mother’s wellbeing. The broader the prayer application, the greater the efficacy, and the more likely a successful outcome, keeping in mind that the optimum outcome is spiritual healing.
MOST EFFECTIVE
Ironically, the most effective form of spiritual warfare doesn’t appear to most people (even Christians) to be spiritual warfare. Jesus taught it to us in scripture and framed not just as a directive but as a command – that we’re to love our enemies. The recoil can be palpable when you remind people of this command. Even we born-again believers can find the thought distasteful if applied to certain individuals. This is where we need to set aside our feelings and act as soldiers by unquestioningly and unhesitatingly following orders. A command is an order, not a suggestion, and seeing that we’re all soldiers in this ongoing spiritual battle, obedience is our currency.
And how are we to wage this highest and most effective form of spiritual warfare? We love our enemies not by exposing them but by praying for them and protecting them. We love our enemies not by depriving them of what they need to survive but by blessing them with abundance. We love our enemies by seemingly doing the opposite of what we consider they’ve brought on themselves, consulting first with God on what precisely we should do and knowing that God will work it all out according to his perfect justice. And because we’ve been obedient to Jesus’ command, we can expect the rewards that come from obedience, both here and in Heaven. Those blessings will become part of our store of treasures awaiting us if and when we make it Home.
TL;DR
Our every thought, word, and deed contribute to the battle being waged in the spiritual realm. That battle is ongoing and non-stop, and we’re part of it whether we realize it or not. We can consciously contribute to the war effort through directed or broad-range prayers, but our most effective contribution—and the one most blessed by God—is to love our enemies. Jesus not only taught us to love those who hate us but commanded us to do so. In obeying Jesus’ command, we achieve the greatest spiritual victories and are rewarded accordingly.
HOW CAN I LOVE THOSE I DON’T EVEN LIKE? THE DILEMMA OF LOVING YOUR ENEMIES
CHARLO, New Brunswick, July 10, 2023 – Jesus famously summed up the Old Testament as “love your neighbour as yourself” or “as you would have others treat you, that’s how you should treat them”. By extension, the New Testament can be summed up as “love your enemies” or “as God treats others, that’s how you should treat them”.
God loves everyone because he is love. Love is one of his core characteristics which means that God cannot NOT love. If he didn’t love, he wouldn’t be God.
We, on the other hand, have to work at loving most people. But love them we must, as Jesus said that by our love we’re known as his followers.
It might help to know that you don’t have to like people to love them.
I admit that I dislike some people. I can’t stand what they do and I can’t stand how they are and I can’t stand being around them. A few of these people I dislike intensely. Still, I need to love even those I dislike intensely or I can’t claim to be a follower of Jesus.
Thank God I can look to the Gospels and see that Jesus didn’t like some people, too. This makes me understand that disliking people is not a spiritual flaw in me but an honest response to unlikeable behavior and mindsets. In fact, Jesus was outspoken in his dislike for most Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, lawyers, politicians, etc.; he didn’t hide his dislike behind a fake smile or a limp handshake: he openly disliked those he disliked and avoided being around them. He was honest about his dislike for some people and explained why he disliked them. Mostly he disliked them for being hypocrites
Yet even for those he intensely disliked, Jesus was able to pray to God to “forgive them for they know not what they do” and to do so as they were torturing and crucifying him. If Jesus could pray for people who were killing him as they were killing him, surely we can find it within ourselves to pray for people who are just being nasty to us.
The first step in loving your enemies is knowing who your enemies are. In spiritual terms, our enemies are all those who are not born-again followers of Jesus. That’s a lot of enemies. For Jesus, his closest family members were also his enemies because they didn’t believe he was the Messiah and they didn’t support his ministry work. In fact, they actively tried to end his ministry. So did the people at his hometown synagogue, who went a step further and tried to kill him for stating he was the Messiah. It’s hard not to see people who are trying to kill you as your enemy, even if they’re your family and friends. It can be even harder to pray for them, as you’re also battling your failed emotional expectations of them.
We’re not promised an easy go of it on Earth as born-again believers. Jesus invited us to take his yoke upon us, as it would ease our burdens. He didn’t say we wouldn’t have burdens; he said that our burdens would be lighter bearing his yoke than the world’s (the devil’s). For me, one of the most difficult emotional burdens is to love people who fail me emotionally. Once the emotions get involved and are further complicated by expectations, it’s difficult to view things objectively. It’s difficult not to get offended.
That’s when we need to remember Jesus telling us that we’re to be offended in nothing and that’s why we have commands like “love your enemies”. We don’t have to reason with a command or even understand it; we just have to do it. So if the command is to love people who fail us emotionally, love them we must. We love them not by liking them or pretending to like them, but by praying for them and blessing them, as Jesus instructed us to do.
Our love for our enemies is known to God, not necessarily to our enemies, since our promise to love our enemies is to God, not to our enemies.
Needless to say, our enemies could not care less if we loved them. We don’t have to tell them we’re praying for them; we just need to do it. As difficult as it might be to wrench out a “forgive them, Father”, we need to do it. God will bless us for it.
The main takeaway from this is that you don’t have to like people to love them, and by loving them I mean praying for them and blessing them. When I was a child, I ruthlessly persecuted my widowed grandmother who looked after me during the day. Yet that same grandmother was always blessing me with money to go to the corner store or with books and other treats she’d picked up for me specially while shopping. When my tormenting got too much for her, she’d retreat to her room for a few minutes and come out sniffling. I knew she’d been crying, and I tormented her for that, too.
But what I didn’t know until after I was born-again was that she wasn’t just crying in her room, she was praying for me. I also didn’t know until after her death that not once had she told my parents what she’d endured from me as a child; she simply prayed for me (without telling me) and blessed me more than she did her other grandchildren. She knew what was wrong with me, and she knew how to deal with it, however difficult it was for her at the time. For 36 years she prayed for me, and when I was born-again, she was the first person I told because I knew she was the only one in my family who would understand what had happened to me.
I learned from my grandmother’s example not only what it means to love your enemies, but that those under your own roof will be your worst enemies. I certainly was hers.
We likely won’t like those who hate us or hate Jesus, but loving those who hate us doesn’t require us to like them. We don’t have to like them. The command is not to like them but to love them and to do so not with our emotions but with prayers and blessings.
Even more importantly, our promise to love our enemies is to God, not to our enemies. So when we pray for and bless those who hate us, we’re keeping a promise to God.
Ultimately, loving our enemies is about keeping a promise to God. And God, when we keep that promise, will bless us.
THE GIFT OF LIKE
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, March 19, 2022 – Jesus’ one command to us, his followers, is to love our enemies.
Thank God he didn’t command us to like them.
That Jesus commanded us to love rather than to like is a very important distinction.
You can love someone without liking them. In other words, you don’t have to like someone to keep Jesus’ command to love them.
The world today is premised on likes. We see that now especially in social media, but it pervades every aspect of the world. Likes are in fact the realm of the world and are based on conformism to a specific ideal. They are also heavily weighted and guided by fleeting and superficial “feels”.
Love, on the other hand, can be surprisingly devoid of feelings. You don’t need to feel love in order to do love. Jesus taught us that loving is less a feeling and more a doing – you love your enemies not by liking them, but by praying for them and doing good to them, even as they curse you.
I have found it helpful, over the years, to remind myself of the distinction between liking and loving. It’s been particularly helpful over the last two years, when I’ve been stigmatized and exiled from society not for something I did, but for something I wouldn’t do (cover my face and inject drugs). I despise many of the values that now prevail in Western society. I despise and reject those values, but I don’t despise and reject the people who hold them. I don’t particularly like those people and I wouldn’t want to spend time with them (unless they, on their own volition, wanted to spend time with me), but I don’t despise them. The command is to love them, regardless of my personal feelings towards them.
Even so, I would never tell them that I love them according to Jesus’ command and that I’m praying for them. My words would be unwelcome. If they outright asked for my prayers, I would unhesitatingly tell them that they have them. But otherwise, I pray for them in secret, like Jesus taught us to do.
Knowing the difference between liking and loving and using that knowledge as the basis for how we interact with the world is crucial to living in the Kingdom. We cannot survive as born-again believers – or even call ourselves Christian – unless we love our enemies. But at the same time, we cannot in most cases love our enemies unless we also understand that we don’t have to like them.
Jesus’ command was not to like but to love. Again, it’s a COMMAND, not a suggestion. And like the other Ten Commandments, it has no asterisks after it, meaning there are no exceptions to the rule. No matter what people say, no matter what they believe or how they live their lives, no matter what side of the military or political or social battle they fight on, and no matter how they treat you or those you actually do like – you are commanded to love them, which means you are commanded to pray for them and do good to them. And because they will likely reject whatever good you would do to them, you need to do your loving of them in secret, without their knowledge and without fanfare.
As I mentioned at the outset, I thank God that I only have to love my enemies rather than to like them. But I find that the more I pray for and bless them, the softer my feelings grow towards them (although I would never show those feelings to them, because they would be unwelcome). The softening of my feelings is the presence of God’s Holy Spirit working through my obedience to God. The Spirit doesn’t work through fake like or love, only through genuine submission of the will.
Like Jesus, I submit to no-one but to God. God alone has my heart, and I willingly give him my will as well. And also like Jesus, I don’t have to give God my heart or my will – I’m not forced to do it; no-one’s forcing me: it’s something I choose to do. I have the capacity to do it and I choose to do it. There is no forcing going on.
When we do that, when we willingly put everything we have and everything we are into God’s hands, he can work through us. He can’t (that is to say, he won’t) work through us if we fake it; he’ll only work through us if we’re genuine in our submission to him.
Submitting to God means keeping his Commandments.
Loving our enemies is a choice we make; coming to like them is a gift from God.
A HIGHER STANDARD
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, February 25, 2022 – As born-again believers, we’re held to a higher standard.
We can’t compare our thoughts and actions with those of people who are in the world. We need to compare our thoughts and actions with those of Jesus. How do we know Jesus’ thoughts and actions? We can read about them in the Gospel. That’s why we continually need to learn from the Gospel, so we’ll know the right way to act and and the right way to direct our thoughts in any given situation, especially in emergencies.
Note that being held to a higher standard doesn’t mean we hold ourselves to be better than those who are held to a lower standard. In no way does being held to a higher standard mean that we’re somehow “better” or that God loves us more. It just means that God expects more from us, in the same way that parents expect more from their eldest than from the baby of the family.
We need to remember this when we feel drawn – tempted – into issues that are affecting the world, such as war or mass protests. We need to look to Jesus for guidance in these issues, not to the media or the government. The guidance provided by Jesus is much different than that provided by the media or government. In most cases, it’s the opposite.
We also need to remember that the Commandments have no asterisks next to them denoting exceptions to the rule, and that they haven’t changed in meaning or content since they were first given to Moses thousands of years ago. The guidance provided by the Ten Commandments remains valid to this day. So we continually need to read and learn from those, too, and to remind ourselves of them whenever temptation comes our way.
War and the loyalties demanded by war are temptations.
We are to love our neighbours and our enemies without exception. There is no exception to that rule. We love and pray for our neighbours and our enemies equally and without distinction. That is our job as born-again believers. In John’s vision of the Kingdom in the book of Revelation, people of all nations and races and tongues stand before and serve God TOGETHER as one.
We are not the world.
We are the Kingdom.
And the Kingdom is ruled by different laws than the world.
Please remember that in the days and weeks to come.
Love all, without distinction.
That is our Commandment.
__________
27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.
33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
(Luke 6:27-38)
ENEMIES AND FRIENDS
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, January 22, 2022 – Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies, and as born-again followers of Jesus, we do what he tells us to do: We love our enemies.
We pray for them, bless them, and do good to them, regardless of what they do to us.
But in loving our enemies, we must also stay aware that they are our enemies. They are not our friends. Enemies can’t and shouldn’t be trusted. Enemies can’t and shouldn’t be entrusted with anything of value. They are enemies.
Yes, we can spend time with them and interact with them, showing them love, but all the while we should still remain aware that they are our enemies. We need constantly to be on our guard.
If, on the other hand, our enemies turn and become followers of Jesus, as witnessed by genuine spiritual rebirth, then they’ve become our friends. We were once enemies of Jesus, but when we were born-again, we became his friends. We need to extend the same friendship to our enemies who turn. We need to test them first to see if they are genuinely turned (as Paul was tested by the disciples), but if we find them to be so, then we need to embrace them as friends the way Jesus has embraced us. No ifs, ands, or buts.
At the same time, don’t be fooled. Many people claim to turn to Jesus, only to be found later to have turned to something other than Jesus, some other Jesus-like gospel that is not Jesus. Most of these people take on leadership positions in the worldly denominational church. They are the gatekeepers Jesus describes as not entering the Kingdom and preventing others from entering, as fishing for converts only to make them more fit for hell than they are themselves. During the time of Jesus’ ministry, the leadership of the synagogues and temple was like this. Today, the leadership of all denominational churches is like this. No exceptions.
When you’re a born-again believer, your enemies – both seen and unseen – are all around you all the time. Your friends – both seen and unseen – are also all around you, and they’re closer to you than your enemies, even if they’re physically far away, and even if you don’t know who they are. They form a spiritual force field around you that cannot be breached. Think of David (when he was on the run from Saul) and his band of outcasts who protected him with their lives. In this case, we are all David while at the same time being all his outcasts. We are both David and those who protected him. However, unlike David and his men, we don’t use physical weapons to protect each other; we use spiritual ones. We pray for each other, just as we pray for our enemies. Our prayers contribute to our protection, because our prayers give God permission to intervene supernaturally over and above what he would normally do.
The more we pray and bless others, whether friend or foe, the more we receive prayers and are blessed in return. It’s a beautiful thing. Never be swayed by those who try to get you to hate anyone for any reason, or you will lose your blessings. We love and bless and pray for our enemies, we love and bless and pray for our friends. This is how we aim to be perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect, as Jesus advised us to be. Don’t let anyone persuade you to be otherwise.
BLESS YOUR CHALLENGES, DON’T CURSE THEM
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, November 27, 2021 – We live in an age that values convenience and instant gratification.
But life doesn’t work that way. Life isn’t convenient and instant: It’s full of challenges.
The most successful people in life, whether in the world or in the Kingdom, bless their challenges rather than curse them. They see challenges not as barriers but as opportunities to make themselves better.
Jesus was famous for embracing challenges, including his enemies. He never shied away from them and always faced them head-on, guided and strengthened by God. We are to follow Jesus in everything we do, so if he embraced and blessed challenges, so should we.
All too often, our default (as modeled to us by the world) is to complain about challenges and barriers. Sometimes we complain to God, but mostly we complain to the world. We complain that things are too difficult. We complain that someone else has an unfair advantage by virtue of their sex or skin color or language or heritage. We complain about the transit system. We complain about bad drivers. We complain about the produce selection. We complain about the weather. We complain about prices going up and our income going down. We complain about our health. We complain about our relationships. In fact, we’re so good at complaining about our challenges, we’ll even complain on behalf of other people for challenges that don’t affect us and are in fact none of our business – but heck, if it’s a challenge, it needs to be cursed and complained about.
Right?
Not anymore.
We need to put that complaining mindset behind us as a relic that no longer has a place in our lives. We’re in the Kingdom, not the world, and Jesus showed us that challenges and barriers are opportunities to better ourselves, and so should be embraced, not cursed. That is the basis for his teaching on loving our enemies. We don’t curse those who hate us or challenge us; we love and bless them, and we embrace them even as we embrace the challenges they present to us.
Of course, like everything else in our lives, we’re not going to be able to bless and embrace our challenges without God’s help. Also (and this is important, so pay attention here), we’re not always going to succeed at overcoming our challenges. Sometimes – even after asking God’s help – we’re going to fail, because we need to fail occasionally.
That’s how we learn best and stay humble. Failure is as important to our progress in the Kingdom as success is, and like challenges (and enemies), failure should be embraced, not shunned and complained about.
Considering the above, I would like to challenge you right here and right now to make a list (even just a mental one) of all the things that you see as dragging you down or as being barriers to your success. Then I’d like to challenge you to take that list and turn it inside out, so that the challenges and curses become opportunities and blessings, so that instead of complaining about your challenges, you use them as a starting point and an opportunity to make yourself better.
Remember – you don’t overcome evil by cursing; you overcome evil by blessing. Jesus taught us that.
Now let’s put it into action.
TELL ME
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, September 23, 2021 – Tell me: Will you still worship God when you can’t get into restaurants and cinemas?
Will you still worship God when you can’t fly or take a train or even get on a bus?
How about when you can’t get into grocery stores? Will you still worship God then?
Because those days are coming, when access will be denied. For some, those days are already here.
Will you still worship God when you lose your job or get court martialed or a dishonorable discharge?
How about when you lose your home and your bank account is frozen and you have no money? How about when you can’t get on the Internet anymore and your driver’s license is suspended?
What will happen to your worship when you’re being rounded up for incarceration in a containment camp? Will you still worship God then?
Because those days are coming, too, for some sooner than others.
We need to worship God no matter what’s going on in our lives and no matter what the world throws at us. Worshiping God doesn’t mean going into a certain building and saying certain things. We can worship God wherever we are and under whatever circumstances we find ourselves. In fact, the worse the circumstances, the more we need to worship and the more we need to thank God.
LOVE FOR OUR ENEMIES AND PRAISE AND THANKFULNESS TO GOD IS OUR WORSHIP, as born-again believers, and it shouldn’t stop just because we can no longer get into restaurants or are being hunted down like animals. The worse the times, the more fervent the faith must be; the worse we’re treated, the more we must love in return.
So tell me – will you be worshiping God just in the good times or also in the bad?
A REMINDER TO KEEP THE 11TH COMMANDMENT
“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”
DARTMOUTH, Nova Scotia, June 10, 2021 – Be very, very, very careful how you apply this scripture.
Jesus was kind to the unkind and even to the condemned.
Think of how kind he was to Judas Iscariot, even knowing all along that Judas would betray him and was therefore condemned for all eternity.
And think that he let Judas kiss him, even knowing that the kiss was a signal to arrest him.
Most people are messed up these days, and we know from scripture that most are condemned, having chosen the broad way. But we, as born-again believers, are still to love these people and be kind to them. Jesus’ directive to love and bless our enemies and to pray for them has the same weight as a Commandment, meaning that it’s non-negotiable.
Non-negotiable means there are no exceptions and no exemptions. It has to be done.
Let me be brutally frank: being unkind to people solely because they are unkind to you or are your spiritual enemy is a sin. Violating any of the Commandments is a sin, and Jesus’ directive to be kind to the unkind has the same weight as a Commandment. If you purposely and persistently sin and refuse to repent, you will lose your grace and join the condemned in the lake of fire.
You won’t be wanting to do that.
You can love your enemies and be kind to them from a distance. You can keep your distance from them, if that’s what you prefer and if that’s how God guides you. But you still need be kind to them according to Jesus’ directive, which he told us outright was another Commandment.
Your kindness may help diffuse a situation they’re going through. Your kindness may be the only kindness they’ve been shown in a long time. Your kindness may even inspire them to be kind to someone else.
Ultimately, your kindness may keep them from a worse eternal condemnation. This is the purpose of being kind to the unkind, of loving your enemies.
The spiritual directive to be kind in the face of unkindness is the highest calling of a born-again believer. It is ultimately what will separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats.
When your enemy hungers, feed him.
When he thirsts, give him something to drink.
When he is naked, clothe him.
When he curses you, bless him.
You know the drill.
Being kind to the unkind is a non-negotiable Commandment and probably the most difficult of all to keep.
But keep it you must.
As with everything, ask God for help with this.
You cannot be kind to the unkind on your own steam.
Ask God for help.
And if you mess up, don’t beat yourself up about it. Make your amends, and do better next time.
THE HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD TO DO
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 23, 2019 – When we were little kids, we learned simple songs. The songs had at most a dozen notes in an easy-to-reach range, a simple and catchy tune, and lyrics that didn’t always make sense but were easy to remember. Think “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. We sang these songs at daycare or at school or with our mother at home. Sometimes we’d sing them quietly to ourselves if we were sad or scared, as a way to recall happier times and comfort ourselves. They were as much a part of our lives as play time, snack time, and bedtime. They became part of us and still are part of us today.
I mention these childhood songs because, as born-again believers, we need to learn a new song. We’re old enough now to choose the notes ourselves, but the lyrics should go like this: (more…)
THE PAIN YOU FEEL IS THE PAIN YOU’VE EARNED
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 9, 2019 – In the instant before I was born again, during what I now call “the moment outside of time”, God imprinted on my soul this one simple truth: The pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned. It was reminder of the “cause and effect” principle that I’d ignored or pretended didn’t exist up to that point in my earthly life, but its impression on me was indelible from then onward. Now, whenever things go a bit south in my life, I immediately remind myself: “The pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned”, and I do whatever is necessary to bring my thinking and doing back in line with God’s will.
Most Christian pastors side-step the principle of cause and effect when teaching their flock, instead referring to God as “a Great Mystery” who works in ways that we cannot possibly fathom. Granted, we can’t know God’s mind perfectly (we just don’t have that capability in our current form), but we can very definitely know the principles he has established for us to live by (more…)
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 