This is my first post since the Gaza war this last summer. It has been a far more intense time than I anticipated . . . I know people and have friends and family who know others, who were killed on both sides. I am a pretty talkative person, but for the first time in a long, long time, I found myself without many words.
A friend asked me why I hadn’t posted anything, and I said I didn’t know what to write. The friend said, ‘well then, write that!’ So here I am, writing that I didn’t know what to write. Sounds like a plan for failure in the world of blogging, right? I began to dig into my heart regarding the why of why I hadn’t written. As I did this, I began to get some clarity. We as believers, need to be willing to love our enemies. This brings glory to God in the highest. It seemed that in many Facebook posts and other communications after the war and the subsequent terror attacks, that the body of believers was ‘leaning on our own understanding’. Our ‘understanding’ is, well, the way we understand things. This could include our cultural background and biases, ethnicity, political persuasions, personal experiences, etc.
The Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9 says ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven’. I believe this season of both Hannukah and Christmas is an amazing time to pray this with fervency. To rise above all of what we fear, feel, think, hear and read, our cultural backgrounds, ethnic histories and biases, and seek God to make us a part of bringing His heavenly kingdom to earth. After all, they’re already living this in heaven. Let’s try and catch up. 🙂 There are no enemies in heaven . . . there is only love. This is part of what we are to bring to earth.
The world has a lot of political activists . . . and too few ‘spiritual activists’. Too few ministers of reconciliation. Too few spiritual fathers.
In Ephesians 2, Paul writes that Jesus is the foundation for our peace and He has broken down the wall of separation between us. Here in Israel the wall is a physical reality. Peace is often an elusive goal. We struggle to bring the message of the gospel to the hurting and the hopeless. The wall CAN come down in the heart of Jew and Arab and it is, slowly, stone by stone. Our work is in the spiritual realm where hearts are healed when the walls of separation, built on bitterness, fear and shame are demolished. But to do this, we need to love our enemies.
The biblical pattern of the spiritual preceding the natural is shown in the separation wall . . . the natural is simply the outward manifestation of what exists in the spirit. The separation wall that separates Israel from the West Bank is merely a reflection of the separation that is in the hearts of Jews and Arabs. So until we as believers take the walls down in our hearts towards Jew to Arab and Arab to Jew, our criticism of the other side of the separation wall is without authority. In other words, we are guilty of the same thing we are accusing the other side of. We ourselves have a wall, and we are accusing the other of also having a wall. It’s very much akin to one friend telling another friend that they will love them, in other words, have connection with them when they agree on every theological or political issues, which are ‘walls’ of separation. Most of us don’t agree on every issue, but yet the command to love remains, regardless.
Fear is probably the greatest hindrance to the commandment to love. Are we willing to give God our fears and move toward a position of love? One of the most recent fears I’ve heard identified is the ‘fear of loving more than the other person’. Are we wiling to be the ones who love the other side the most? Just like Jesus did and continues to do with us??
My hope in this post here is that you will take a moment and live out Luke 2:14 . . . bringing glory to God, some peace to your world, and some good will toward men, all men, friends and enemies alike. Ask God to give you tangible things to do to reflect His will and ways in heaven, here on earth. Regardless if your world is or isn’t close to a violent conflict, and you need some ideas on some small steps towards love, feel free to email me. God already has a peace plan . . . it is His Son, and the Holy Spirit coming to this earth, to nearby Bethlehem, so that all the nations could know Him. Our mandate and privilege is to be the ones to bring it to earth.
