Bible Verse of the Day Saturday September 23rd, 2023

Matthew 5:44-45 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

This verse of Scripture is from a sermon preached by Jesus, who needs no reference verses or sermon notes. When He preaches, He speaks of Himself; His words are the Word of God as we have it today in the Holy Bible. Jesus is teaching us here how to overcome the difficulties of life that we contend with daily. We do not have any power or control over what others say or do to us in our daily lives. There will be times when others are offensive towards us, whether because they deliver foul language internationally or it is just their nature to be offensive. We do not have any control over what others say or do to us, but we do have control over our reaction to any negative behavior that comes our way.

The message Jesus is bringing to us is that His desire for us is that we let it slide, much like the old saying, “like water off a duck’s back.” Letting it linger in our minds will rob us of the joy that we can know through Christ Jesus. With God’s help, we can put it out of our minds and focus more on spreading God’s Word to the ends of the earth. If we continue to think about it, we will be forced to relive the animosity, hostility, and hurt. We must also not share what was said or done to us with our other friends. This adverse reaction can cause animosity between our friends who hurt us and those with whom we share this. Instead, we should conserve our emotional energy to live our lives to the fullest, loving our families and friends and showing kindness to all we encounter.

We should not spend another heartbeat letting this one incident bother us; the ones that hurt us may not change; however, because of the love of God, in and through Christ Jesus, we can change. While in the flesh, we coach ourselves to respond in a particular way when something negative comes into our lives. We say, because they did this or that to us, we will respond in kind; that’ll show them. The problem with this scenario is that we will be allowing our perpetrators to control us, and if our negative comebacks don’t work, our day will worsen for our efforts. The only resolve for these negative situations is surrendering our minds, bodies, and souls to Christ Jesus.

God’s Word tells us that when we are kind to our enemies, it’s like heaping hot coals on their heads (Romans 12:20). This symbolic practice comes from an ancient Jewish custom that God explains to us in the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs 25:22 In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.

This symbolic practice serves to cause someone remorse by returning good for evil. When we are good to the ones who are not so good to us, we will experience a joy that only those totally surrendered to Christ Jesus will know. Furthermore, we will be allowing God to administer justice and not taking that job that belongs to Him in our own hands; the only way we will ever control our minds is by surrendering them to the mind of Christ Jesus.