...We push over the verge of the creation — we damn — just because we cannot embrace. For to embrace is the necessity of our deepest being. That foiled, we hate. Instead of admonishing ourselves that there is our enchained brother, that there lies our enchanted, disfigured, scarce recognizable sister, captive of the devil, to break, how much sooner, from their bonds, that we love them! — we recoil into the hate which would fix them there; and the dearly lovable reality of them we sacrifice to the outer falsehood of Satan's incantations, thus leaving them to perish.
...If any one say, "Do not make such vague distinctions. There is the person. Can you deny that that person is unlovely? How then can you love him?" I answer, "That person, with the evil thing cast out of him, will be yet more the person, for he will be his real self. The thing that now makes you dislike him is separable from him, is therefore not he, makes himself so much less himself, for it is working death in him. Now he is in danger of ceasing to be a person at all. When he is clothed and in his right mind, he will be a person in deed. You could not then go on hating him. Begin to love him now, and help him into the loveliness which is his. Do not hate him although you can. The personalty, I say, though clouded, besmeared, defiled with the wrong, lies deeper than the wrong, and indeed, so far as the wrong has reached it, is by the wrong injured, yea, so far, it may be, destroyed.
...I have taken for granted that the fault lies with the enemy so considered, for upon the primary rocks would I build my foundation. But the question must be put to each man by himself, "Is my neighbour indeed my enemy, or am I my neighbour's enemy, and so take him to be mine? — awful thought! Or, if he be mine, am not I his? Am I not refusing to acknowledge the child of the kingdom within his bosom, so killing the child of the kingdom within my own?" Let us claim for ourselves no more indulgence than we give to him. Such honesty will end in severity at home and clemency abroad. For we are accountable for the ill in ourselves, and have to kill it; for the good in our neighbour, and have to cherish it. He only, in the name and power of God, can kill the bad in him; we can cherish the good in him by being good to it across all the evil fog that comes between our love and his good.
Nor ought it to be forgotten that this fog is often the result of misapprehension and mistake, giving rise to all kinds of indignations, resentments, and regrets. Scarce anything about us is just as it seems, but at the core there is truth enough to dispel all falsehood and reveal life as unspeakably divine. O brother, sister, across this weary fog, dim-lighted by the faint torches of our truth-seeking, I call to the divine in thee, which is mine, not to rebuke thee, not to rouse thee, not to say "Why hatest thou me?" but to say "I love thee; in God's name I love thee." And I will wait until the true self looks out of thine eyes, and knows the true self in me.
But in the working of the Divine Love upon the race, my enemy is doomed to cease to be my enemy, and to become my friend. One flash of truth towards me would destroy my enmity at once; one hearty confession of wrong, and our enmity passes away; from each comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time. For this The Truth is at work. In the faith of this, let us love the enemy now, accepting God's work in reversion, as it were; let us believe as seeing his yet invisible triumph, clasping and holding fast our brother, in defiance of the changeful wiles of the wicked enchantment which would persuade our eyes and hearts that he is not our brother, but some horrible thing, hateful and hating.
-Love Thine Enemy, George MacDonald
There is a brother that comes to mind whenever talk of neighbors and enemies occurs. I know it to be all the more true as I think the thoughts of praying for his heart to change. If I am to be honest with myself, and since I cannot be anything but honest towards God lest I am deceiving myself,it is only with myself that I must force out such honesty. I do not want to pray for this brother's change of heart for fear of loss. A very, very selfish loss. I fear the loss of the one I love. But alas that fear has come to reality. My love does not return such feelings. There is always hope so long as hope can exist.
Then David confessed to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan replied, “Yes, but the Lord has forgiven you, and you won’t die for this sin. Nevertheless, because you have shown utter contempt for the Lord by doing this, your child will die.” After Nathan returned to his home, the Lord sent a deadly illness to the child of David and Uriah’s wife. David begged God to spare the child. He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground. The elders of his household pleaded with him to get up and eat with them, but he refused. Then on the seventh day the child died. David’s advisers were afraid to tell him. “He wouldn’t listen to reason while the child was ill,” they said. “What drastic thing will he do when we tell him the child is dead?” When David saw them whispering, he realized what had happened. “Is the child dead?” he asked. “Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.” Then David got up from the ground, washed himself, put on lotions, and changed his clothes. He went to the Tabernacle and worshiped the Lord. After that, he returned to the palace and was served food and ate. His advisers were amazed. “We don’t understand you,” they told him. “While the child was still living, you wept and refused to eat. But now that the child is dead, you have stopped your mourning and are eating again.” David replied, “I fasted and wept while the child was alive, for I said, ‘Perhaps the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.”
-2 Samuel 12
There is always hope so long as hope can exist. But my love does not return such feelings. What a selfish wish that a brother may stay in his shackles so that I may be chosen by my love? Again if I am to be honest with myself, since God You already know it to be true, this is the condition of my heart towards this brother. Forgive me Lord for wishing such evil so that I may have happiness. What sort of happiness can actually come from such wicked wishing? It is only a very shallow, selfish happiness that ultimately would consume the reality of my person leaving the veneer of false self and happiness. But again, as is always the case with love, I must pursue freedom above all. Above even my own desires. She, being what I desire, does not desire me. And if my love is to be as pure and as fearless as the perfect love displayed to me by my Savior, then above all I should pursue freedom for her. As my God pursues freedom for me.
And so I pray for my brother, my enemy. And thus in so doing he is transformed into my neighbor, no longer my enemy. I pray that he would come back to you. I pray that he would over come the outer falsehood of Satan's incantations. I have chosen to recoil into the hate which would keep him in his chains. It is by no wrong done to me that I harbor such hate towards my brother. But it is the wrong done towards her, whom I love. And also the feelings which she holds deeply towards the memory of he, my brother, who once was prior to the outter shell he has, through his freedom, chosen to live in. Only through the honest confession of my wicked heart "comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time. For this The Truth is at work. In the faith of this, let us love the enemy now, accepting God's work in reversion, as it were; let us believe as seeing his yet invisible triumph, clasping and holding fast our brother, in defiance of the changeful wiles of the wicked enchantment which would persuade our eyes and hearts that he is not our brother, but some horrible thing, hateful and hating." I will choose to transform this brother from an enemy to a neighbor in the faith that God's work will be done. I trust you Jesus and I know Your goodness to be the greatest truth in this universe You have created.
Forgive me Jesus for my selfishness. For my hatred. I pray that You would pour your love on Your son, my brother, Jordan, that Your son would one day turn back towards home and find You, his father, running towards him with arms open. I also pray freedom for Bea. I pray that she may choose from her heart. I'm sorry for the evil I have held towards Jordan out of fear and out of selfish desires. I do not wish to possess her heart unless it is completely, freely, and wholly given on her own choosing. Free me from this self imposed prison of hatred towards my brother. I want to be a child of Your kingdom.
I trust you Jesus
free her heart
heal Bea
heal Jordan
heal me
Rosie and Me - Come Back
...If any one say, "Do not make such vague distinctions. There is the person. Can you deny that that person is unlovely? How then can you love him?" I answer, "That person, with the evil thing cast out of him, will be yet more the person, for he will be his real self. The thing that now makes you dislike him is separable from him, is therefore not he, makes himself so much less himself, for it is working death in him. Now he is in danger of ceasing to be a person at all. When he is clothed and in his right mind, he will be a person in deed. You could not then go on hating him. Begin to love him now, and help him into the loveliness which is his. Do not hate him although you can. The personalty, I say, though clouded, besmeared, defiled with the wrong, lies deeper than the wrong, and indeed, so far as the wrong has reached it, is by the wrong injured, yea, so far, it may be, destroyed.
...I have taken for granted that the fault lies with the enemy so considered, for upon the primary rocks would I build my foundation. But the question must be put to each man by himself, "Is my neighbour indeed my enemy, or am I my neighbour's enemy, and so take him to be mine? — awful thought! Or, if he be mine, am not I his? Am I not refusing to acknowledge the child of the kingdom within his bosom, so killing the child of the kingdom within my own?" Let us claim for ourselves no more indulgence than we give to him. Such honesty will end in severity at home and clemency abroad. For we are accountable for the ill in ourselves, and have to kill it; for the good in our neighbour, and have to cherish it. He only, in the name and power of God, can kill the bad in him; we can cherish the good in him by being good to it across all the evil fog that comes between our love and his good.
Nor ought it to be forgotten that this fog is often the result of misapprehension and mistake, giving rise to all kinds of indignations, resentments, and regrets. Scarce anything about us is just as it seems, but at the core there is truth enough to dispel all falsehood and reveal life as unspeakably divine. O brother, sister, across this weary fog, dim-lighted by the faint torches of our truth-seeking, I call to the divine in thee, which is mine, not to rebuke thee, not to rouse thee, not to say "Why hatest thou me?" but to say "I love thee; in God's name I love thee." And I will wait until the true self looks out of thine eyes, and knows the true self in me.
But in the working of the Divine Love upon the race, my enemy is doomed to cease to be my enemy, and to become my friend. One flash of truth towards me would destroy my enmity at once; one hearty confession of wrong, and our enmity passes away; from each comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time. For this The Truth is at work. In the faith of this, let us love the enemy now, accepting God's work in reversion, as it were; let us believe as seeing his yet invisible triumph, clasping and holding fast our brother, in defiance of the changeful wiles of the wicked enchantment which would persuade our eyes and hearts that he is not our brother, but some horrible thing, hateful and hating.
-Love Thine Enemy, George MacDonald
There is a brother that comes to mind whenever talk of neighbors and enemies occurs. I know it to be all the more true as I think the thoughts of praying for his heart to change. If I am to be honest with myself, and since I cannot be anything but honest towards God lest I am deceiving myself,it is only with myself that I must force out such honesty. I do not want to pray for this brother's change of heart for fear of loss. A very, very selfish loss. I fear the loss of the one I love. But alas that fear has come to reality. My love does not return such feelings. There is always hope so long as hope can exist.
Then David confessed to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan replied, “Yes, but the Lord has forgiven you, and you won’t die for this sin. Nevertheless, because you have shown utter contempt for the Lord by doing this, your child will die.” After Nathan returned to his home, the Lord sent a deadly illness to the child of David and Uriah’s wife. David begged God to spare the child. He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground. The elders of his household pleaded with him to get up and eat with them, but he refused. Then on the seventh day the child died. David’s advisers were afraid to tell him. “He wouldn’t listen to reason while the child was ill,” they said. “What drastic thing will he do when we tell him the child is dead?” When David saw them whispering, he realized what had happened. “Is the child dead?” he asked. “Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.” Then David got up from the ground, washed himself, put on lotions, and changed his clothes. He went to the Tabernacle and worshiped the Lord. After that, he returned to the palace and was served food and ate. His advisers were amazed. “We don’t understand you,” they told him. “While the child was still living, you wept and refused to eat. But now that the child is dead, you have stopped your mourning and are eating again.” David replied, “I fasted and wept while the child was alive, for I said, ‘Perhaps the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.”
-2 Samuel 12
There is always hope so long as hope can exist. But my love does not return such feelings. What a selfish wish that a brother may stay in his shackles so that I may be chosen by my love? Again if I am to be honest with myself, since God You already know it to be true, this is the condition of my heart towards this brother. Forgive me Lord for wishing such evil so that I may have happiness. What sort of happiness can actually come from such wicked wishing? It is only a very shallow, selfish happiness that ultimately would consume the reality of my person leaving the veneer of false self and happiness. But again, as is always the case with love, I must pursue freedom above all. Above even my own desires. She, being what I desire, does not desire me. And if my love is to be as pure and as fearless as the perfect love displayed to me by my Savior, then above all I should pursue freedom for her. As my God pursues freedom for me.
And so I pray for my brother, my enemy. And thus in so doing he is transformed into my neighbor, no longer my enemy. I pray that he would come back to you. I pray that he would over come the outer falsehood of Satan's incantations. I have chosen to recoil into the hate which would keep him in his chains. It is by no wrong done to me that I harbor such hate towards my brother. But it is the wrong done towards her, whom I love. And also the feelings which she holds deeply towards the memory of he, my brother, who once was prior to the outter shell he has, through his freedom, chosen to live in. Only through the honest confession of my wicked heart "comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time. For this The Truth is at work. In the faith of this, let us love the enemy now, accepting God's work in reversion, as it were; let us believe as seeing his yet invisible triumph, clasping and holding fast our brother, in defiance of the changeful wiles of the wicked enchantment which would persuade our eyes and hearts that he is not our brother, but some horrible thing, hateful and hating." I will choose to transform this brother from an enemy to a neighbor in the faith that God's work will be done. I trust you Jesus and I know Your goodness to be the greatest truth in this universe You have created.
Forgive me Jesus for my selfishness. For my hatred. I pray that You would pour your love on Your son, my brother, Jordan, that Your son would one day turn back towards home and find You, his father, running towards him with arms open. I also pray freedom for Bea. I pray that she may choose from her heart. I'm sorry for the evil I have held towards Jordan out of fear and out of selfish desires. I do not wish to possess her heart unless it is completely, freely, and wholly given on her own choosing. Free me from this self imposed prison of hatred towards my brother. I want to be a child of Your kingdom.
I trust you Jesus
free her heart
heal Bea
heal Jordan
heal me
Rosie and Me - Come Back