Last night I had a chance to catch up with a friend on FaceTime. He got engaged over the weekend and I needed more details than just a photo of a ring on her finger! A conversation that started off so brightly eventually spiraled to a really cynical place. We found ourselves complaining about the various people and circumstances that frustrate us. Things in politics, the media, society around us…you get the picture. After a while we caught ourselves and pulled our thoughts back to our gospel hope, but there was something sinister about how seductive that cynicism was.

That conversation has had me thinking about what Jesus has to say in Matthew 5:43-45:

You have heard it said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

Usually when I’ve said something about praying for our enemies, someone will reply, “But I don’t really have any enemies.” I’ll grant you that there’s probably no Joker in your Batman story, but I’ll bet you’re just as prone to enemy thinking as I am. Anytime you think of another person as an obstacle to be overcome, rather than a friend to be received, enemy thinking takes root.

And we have plenty of that don’t we? It’s an election year and campaign narratives are all about beating the other side. Whether you’re pro-mask or anti-mask has our country broken into tribes. And all of that’s just on top of every other reason we have to see people as obstacles: promotions at work, opportunities for our kids, even down to the last pound of beef at the grocery store. We have plenty of reasons to see other people as obstacles, not neighbors.

Whether you know it or not, you have enemies and Jesus tells us to wage a different kind of war. Instead of fighting with anger and hate, we engage with prayer. We seek the good of our enemies, because that’s what our Father in heaven did for us. He sent his Son, not to destroy us, but to save us. Sin made us God’s enemy but, rather than hate us, he loved us.

So, how can we pray for our enemies? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Pray for Grace – There’s an aggressive way to do this. “Sure, I’ll pray for my enemies. I’ll pray God smites them!” That’s not what Jesus means. When we pray for our enemies, we pray for them to receive the same grace that we have. Grace changes everything – even enemies into friends. Ask the Holy Spirit to bless your enemies, not curse them.

2. Pray for Patience – In at least one way, God’s like Gandalf. He’s never early or late. He arrives precisely when he means to. God works on his timeline, not ours, and sometimes that’s frustrating. Pray for God to give you the patience to love, even when you’d rather hate. By his Spirit, we’ll wear our enemies down with our capacity to love them in the face of opposition.

3. Pray for Vision – I was watching a talk by Bryan Stevenson last night about his work with the Equal Justice Initiative. At some point in the talk, he said something that has stuck with me: “I believe that people are more than the worst thing they ever did.” Telling a lie doesn’t mean you’re just a liar. Even killing someone doesn’t mean you’re just a killer. But, when we hate someone, we reduce them to whatever that thing is. If we’re angry because someone cut us off in traffic, it doesn’t matter what else they’ve done. They’ve done that! Thank God that he sees us as so much more than the worst thing we ever did. When we pray for our enemies, let’s pray for the vision to see others the way that God does.

The smog of enemy thinking is thick in our country today. You can smell it, can’t you? We could use that as an opportunity to get frustrated and take up even more enemy thinking – or we could see it as an opportunity. The fresh air of the gospel is even fresher against a backdrop like this. Christian, the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is in you. Don’t add to the stink of enemy thinking. Be that fresh air and pray for your enemies.