Praying for Your Enemies

     What do you do with all of those broken relationships that seem to clutter your life?  You can't seem to forget them because they haunt your memory and you wish that things had gone better, but they didn't.  I can think back through different periods in my life and the memory of relationships gone bad are just there and you wish that you could go back in time and cancel the statement you made that set it all off.  Your mouth, perhaps, was already in gear and words were said and then you find yourself in another mess.  The subject of prayer is certainly an important one in the Bible.  The word, pray and all of its forms, is used over 500 times.  In the Old Testament, the word "pray" was used many times in a greeting or departing of people.  When it comes to the New Testament, the first use of the word is in the following verse of Scripture.  Matthew 5:43-44 says, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;"   

      Almost in the absolute beginning of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, He addresses the broken relationships that exists in all of our lives.  The Lord Jesus Christ gives new instruction on what to do with the relationships with enemies and those that curse you and to those that hate you.  We might like to think that everyone loves us and just things we are the sweetest things since frosting on a cupcake, but that isn't the case.  The list can begin within your own family and then travel to the people in your church family and then to your business transactions and then to even the stranger who doesn't know you that well in the first place.  The more you get involved in life, the more people that seem to crop up on this list of malcontents who don't like the way you part your hair.  The Lord Jesus Christ, right in the beginning of His ministry, exhorts believers to pray for this long list of people that are irritated by the things you do.  People come to mind and perhaps even the time of the irritation, or the conversation that ended it all and when that comes to your mind, do what the LORD instructed in the above passage.  Pray for them.  Now, don't pray that God will doing something terrible to them, but that they would grow in their own Christian life and this, by the way, is a great prayer for us also, that we would be growing in Christ as Peter said in Second Peter 3:18.  Get into the habit that when the people that hate you come to mind, pray for them right at that moment.  Praise God today that He answers prayer.