Remember that old saying, “Kill them with kindness”? I’m pretty sure it comes from Proverbs 25: 21, 22 “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” What’s the goal here? Are we literally hoping to heap burning coals on someone’s head? NO! We are to show (genuine) kindness in order to win them over for Christ.
I’m sure most of us know that Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves, but he also told us to love our enemies and to pray for the very people that make our lives more difficult (Matt. 5:44). That’s a pretty hard pill to swallow for most of us. Your “enemy” can be that person at work who is constantly annoying you or belittling you or bad-mouthing you to the boss. It could be something much worse. The point is, today you see a lot of people preaching superficial peace and reconciliation, without ever getting to the real issues (political correctness at its finest). “You believe what you believe, and I’ll believe what I believe.” There is some good in that, of course, because we must respect and listen to others in order to have a real conversation. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten to the point where there is only one acceptable political opinion and type of spirituality and we all know what that is. This is not genuine and it is not truthful. I, for one, am sick and tired of it. If we want honest change and honest reconciliation, we have to be honest with ourselves and each other.
We also have to remember that we, at one time, were also enemies of God, in that we were not reconciled with him and did not recognize our need for him in our lives. He chose to love us and pursue us anyway. Well, now that we have accepted him, how is that showing to others? Like Paul said, people are ultimately going to see if we have been transformed by looking at our lives and how we interact with others (2 Cor. 3:1-6). Are we facilitating people coming to Christ, or are we making it more difficult?
When we humble ourselves before God and pray for the people who are our enemies, we make ourselves open to being changed as well by the Holy Spirit. We have to ask: Is there something that I could be doing better? Is my attitude right with God in regard to this person? How are we going to witness to this person if we are not being kind to them? This is something that God has put on my heart recently. There are a few people that I can think of that I can start praying for. What about you?
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