I was visiting a local church this week and the pastor gave a sermon on love. As I was listening to the message I remembered a warning the Holy Spirit gave me about forty years ago. The Lord had called Pauline and I into an evangelistic healing ministry outside of the normal church structure. The warning was, “Stay hidden in the church or they will destroy you”!
Our meetings were outside the church in homes and public halls. We would have sing-longs and dinners; a lot of different people came. We would always share the message of Jesus Christ and pray for the sick. We went to church but we did not try to interfere in the church at all.
We found we were not very welcome in some of the churches, and they did not want us making any waves. I paid attention to the warning and kept my head down. We did visit a number of different churches and as a result I discovered a lack of love within the individual churches as well as between the churches.
Our enemy is not some member of our church; it is not the other churches in town. My point is if we can’t love the people in our church or the church down street; how are we going to love the enemy that hate us and want us dead?
Jesus went on to say, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”!
Recently I have had a real burden to pray for those poor Arab families that have no place to go. They don t want to kill me they only want to live and feed their families. In the service this morning the Lord said, “Why aren’t you praying for the enemy, the one’s that want to kill you, they are the saddest ones of all, they are the ones that really need your prayers!”
The comment from the pastor was, “They don’t need our bullets and guns; they need our prayers!”