Reading your Bible for Today November 16

November 16: Matthew 5:43-48

KJV Key Verse: Matthew 5:48
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. 

Devotion:
One of the hardest things to do as a Christian is to continue opening your heart to those who persecute / mock / ridicule / despise you in some way. Whilst it is true that during a war you will be fighting the enemy, God does not want us to simply hate people because of who they are or what they stand for. We may face people who will make our life difficult just because we are Christians. To those people we should open our lives so they will see God's amazing love shine through us. We may face people who will want to kill us just because they think their religion says so. To those we need to show the love of God.

Whilst we may not personally face people from these groups, we will face people who just don't like us for some reason. That reason may be because we have turned them down before or we have just said “no” to them! These are the people who we should be concentrating on. They build up some element of hatred just because of a small thing we have done in their life. If that were to stay with them, then they would be blocking out a whole part of their life just for that one thing which has happened.

“But”, I hear you say, “They started it...” Oh how easy it is to set the blame on the person who we believe should be shouldering it! We may well be right in our physical judgement, but we are also serving spiritual judgement on them. We have no right to serve spiritual judgement on anyone – we are the ones who are indebted to Jesus for what He has done for us. We are the ones who should be bowing to God's judgement.

We need to be more like Christ in our ways otherwise others will not be able to see Christ through us. Being more like Christ can only encourage people, whereas by being “human”, we are serving them with a judgement which only Christ should be carrying out!

Points to Ponder:
What do you do when you argue with friends?

Do you ask God to guide you with your enemies?