Grace Prays for Its Enemies

Anybody can pray for the people who are good to them. Jesus asked for more than that, and He said it in a sermon, not in a private note to the especially spiritual: "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you" (Matthew 5:44, NKJV).

Read that list slowly, because Jesus chose every word in it. Bless the ones who curse. Do good to the ones who hate. Pray for the ones who use you, spitefully, on purpose. This is not a command to feel warm feelings about somebody who wounded you. Feelings follow obedience here, not the other way around. Jesus is assigning actions: a blessing spoken instead of a curse returned, a good deed done for somebody who has done you the opposite, a name carried into prayer instead of into gossip. And He went first. On the cross, with the nails still fresh and the crowd still mocking, He prayed for the men who put Him there. The command was never theory to Him.

This is Day 26 of our series on the grace of God, and this is where grace stops being something we only receive and starts being something we hand out. The grace that reached you when you were far from God, when you were, in the plain language of Romans, still His enemy, is the same grace He now asks you to carry toward the hardest person in your life. That does not make what they did small, and it does not require you to pretend it did not happen. It means the debt gets handed to God instead of collected by you, and hands that are busy praying for a person have a hard time staying clenched against them.

Here is the practice for Day 26, and it is a real one: before this day ends, pray by name for one person who has hurt you, and ask God to bless them, out loud, in specific words. Some of you will find out that praying for an enemy changes them. All of you will find out that it changes you. The bitterness loses its chair at the table the moment blessing takes the seat.

Prayer: Father, You loved me while I was still far from You, and Your grace reached me before I deserved any of it. Teach me to hand that same grace outward. Put the name of the person who hurt me on my lips in prayer today, and help me bless them the way You have blessed me. Heal what is still sore in me, and do in them what only You can do. In Jesus' name, Amen.