How powerful must one be to love his/her enemies! This is real power, it means that you know where you stand and you know who the ultimate winner is, so you do not freak out in front of unfair situations that come your way since you know that regardless of what is approaching, God will use it for your good. I am not saying that bad things like a disease or some unhappy event comes from God, no, but even if Satan manages to hurt us using his evil ways, God will ultimately turn it into our favor.

How to actually live by concepts like these below? “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” Luke 6:27-28 “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.” 1 Thessalonians 5:15 How Jesus, how? Interestingly, Jesus Himself tells us how in simple but such deep words : “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”John 13:34 Therefore, how? What a failure awaits all of us who want to try loving our enemies without first knowing how Christ loved us! The logical conclusion is that we must first really recognize and be aware of the way Jesus loved and still loves us. To know how He loves us we need to know the manifestation of His love while He was here on Earth and also His materialization of love He has for us right now. 1.

Firstly Jesus loved God and His plan, obeyed completely without complaining because Christ knew His Father and His intentions! Now this is crucial for us because unless we know God we won’t be able to trust Him enough to even know His love and His godly character. Really getting to know someone is the way to trusting or not trusting that person. Many times we judge people by certain things we heard about them but we are not able to discern between a mere rumor and the real fact until we truly go to the roots and check the facts. It is the same with God, do not believe shallow opinions, check for yourself everything you think you know about God, read the Bible and test your knowledge to see if you stand on the right ground. 2. Once one gets to know God, the safety of God’s love and His perfectly just character make that person realize how holy and trustworthy God is and the second step is going further listening to God and respecting, fulfilling His statutes. This is getting us closer to the place Christ was – that is the total dependence and obedience towards The Father.

The communication between us and God is improved when we are growing closer to Him and we are open to receive more and more of all that is good and perfect that comes from Him including love. His presence itself changes us and under His influence we change our evil ways into His good ways, our limited views are enlarged with godly perspectives and this enlightens our thinking, giving us strength. 3. As Jesus’ most prized possession is the very relationship with His Father, a godly person comes to the point where the advice of the almighty becomes the very life of that person. Here is a great point where God wants to bring us, to realize that we indeed live by any word that God speaks and this is how His views become ours, His love for people comes in our hearts and we end up being strong enough and empowered to even love our enemies and do good to those who treat us wrong. Our flesh will surely fight against with its specific tantrums but we eventually grow out of that realizing that God’s way is indeed far better than what we would normally go for. It is a process and it is not happening over night but the starting point is to understand the lack of power in our Churches nowadays and to turn to the source of love and real power- God Himself, to be able to love our brothers as Christ loved us dying for us on the cross. The early days of the church are watered with the blood of the martyrs and the early writers recall how when Christians were offered as pray for lions they were arguing who should go first in the arena to be eaten because they saw and felt a special grace God was pouring on those who had to die like that. They experienced the power of God’s protection for real!

They saw it, tasted it, felt it, not only heard about it without having to touch it for themselves. The power of experience makes the difference! If we don’t experience God in everyday things all we know about Him remains a mere theory. The presence of God makes you fearless and death is not a barrier between Christ and God’s children because they know where they are going. Therefore, we must fight the good fight of faith, getting closer to God and doing what He asks because He loves us and loving Him back is the least we can do for Him! What an awesome Father we all have! If we only knew Him!