Text: Prov.24:17-18
17 Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: 18 Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.
Read: 2 Samuel 1:1-12
When God was going to replace Saul as king in Israel, He said He had found David, a man after His own heart. David knew to a large extent how to be pleasing unto God. The tendency for any man is to rejoice at the calamity of “an enemy”. Meanwhile the only enemy man has is the devil.
Those who refuse to yield to God but yield to the enemy as instrument of our torment are not subjected to us to judge, neither are we permitted to avenge ourselves. It is at the discretion of God to deal with them as He pleases. Ironically, even when God so deals, He does not expect us to get swollen headed and rejoice at the calamity of any such person. When we do so, we displease the one who says, “all souls are mine” and who does not want any to perish.
Therefore, He enjoins us to pray for our enemies. David should have been the first to jump for joy at the death and calamity of Saul for it was because Saul sought his life that he became a fugitive and refugee in the land of the enemy. But because he was a man of love, he rather mourned the demise of his Commander in Chief and father in law, albeit, “an enemy”. Can you do that? Yet that is what God desires.
The reason you keep facing opposition from myriad of friends is because you keep failing in this aspect. Love always. Love only. Hate no one. Despise no one. Seek peace. Pursue it. Be deliberate in doing good. Do unto others as you will want them to do unto you and not as they do unto you. They may not know better but you are being groomed of God and that’s the difference. Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus: Pray for your “enemies”.
Pray:
Father, I do not want to run afoul of you; as difficult as it may be, please help me by your Spirit to love them that persecute and despitefully use me that I may be like you truly in Jesus name.
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