Do the Extra Thing – Luke part 17 – Justin Sytsma

Good morning. Good morning.

For those who don't know me, my name is Justin.

I'm on the pastors here for rights.

And for those who are new, we have been working through the

book of Luke, the Gospel of Luke.

We've been doing it slowly and deliberately, allowing us to get

the broader sense of all that's happening in this entire book,

but also looking at a very micro level at each passage and what

God is saying through each of these sections.

Now, if you participated in our community Bible study this past

week, we had a pretty intense passage to go through.

You would have had you would have had a chance to process the

complexities of a passage like this.

It's simple, but it's also very difficult.

It's easy to understand, but it's perhaps perhaps the hardest

passage in the entirety of Scripture to actually live out.

And we get to talk about that today.

So I'm excited. I'm going to pray and then we're

going to read the passage together.

So, gracious God, as we turn to Your Word for us, may the Spirit

of God rest upon us in this place.

Help us to be steadfast in our hearing, in our speaking, in our

believing, and in our living. Amen.

So Luke chapter 6 starting at verse 27.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

But to those who are listening I say love your enemies, do good

to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray

for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one

cheek, turn to them the other. Also if someone takes your coat,

do not withhold your shirt from them.

Give to everyone who asks you and if anyone takes what belongs

to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have

them do to you. If you love those who love you,

what credit is that to you? Even sinners love who love them.

And if you do good to those who do good to, who are good to you,

what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what

credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners,

expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good

to them, and lend to them without expecting to get

anything back. Then your reward will be great,

and you will be children of the Most High, because He is kind to

the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful just as your Father

is merciful. Friends, this is the word of the

Lord. Thanks be to God.

So like I said, this is simple to understand.

There are lots of passages where Jesus speaks and it's a little

bit opaque, a little hard to understand.

Not this one. We should all walk away with a

pretty clear understanding of what Jesus intends for us.

But if the history of my life, of your life, and the history of

Christianity more broadly is true, is any indication, the

simple command given here is the most difficult to actually do.

And he writes, says it this way. He says there are two

particularly astonishing things about these instructions.

First, their simplicity. As we've said, they are obvious,

clear, direct, and memorable. Second, there's scarcity.

How many people do you know who really live like this?

How many communities do you know where these guidelines are, the

rules of life? What's gone wrong?

Has God changed or have we forgotten who he really is?

That stung when I first read that and still does so well.

There are some questions from some important questions that we

raised at our community Bible study about this passage.

Curiosity is about some of the particulars, all that kind of

thing. The most important thing that we

can do with this text is ask how?

How do we actually live this out?

So as we do that, we are going to walk through the text to make

sure we have a good understanding of those

particulars because there are some parts that require a little

bit of context for a fuller understanding.

So the first section here, it contains a lot of action.

So if you notice, love your enemies, do good to those who

hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat

you. If someone slaps you on one

cheek, turn to them the other. If someone takes your coats, do.

I can't really circle that whole thing.

Do not withhold your shirt from them.

Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs

to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have

them do to you. Like it.

The amount of action that's going on here?

The amount of the amount of verbs going on here, it

indicates that this is something that we really do need to

practice. This isn't some spiritual

metaphor. This is something we need to

work out how to actually do in our everyday life.

Well, one of the things that can be a little confusing is that we

talked about this on Wednesday that the English language is a

little bit not the best when it comes to the word love.

We talk about how we love our cat and we love spaghetti, and

also we love our spouse. It's it's very imprecise.

Whereas in the Greek there's lots of different words for the

word love. There's storage, which is a

familial parental love. There's eras, which is romantic

love, passionate love. There's philia, which is a love

between friends. But we're not talking about this

kind of when we say love your enemies, we're not talking about

any of those. We're not talking about having

having to love our enemies as we do our romantic partner or our

friends or even, or even yeah, a family or a child.

It's nothing like that. It's the word agape and say

agape. Agape is sort of this God tier

love. It's unconditional, it's

selfless, it's transcendence. It's a love that's not based on

feeling or even merit. It's often categorized as as the

type of love that God has for creation.

And here we see it as the type of love that Jesus is calling

his followers of Jesus to live out.

Jesus is calling us to a love that chooses and that tracks.

I don't know of anyone who has successfully loved and done good

to someone who hates them based on feelings and vibes.

It just won't happen. This is an act of the will.

This is an act of the will. I think it's just worth naming

that as we go into this because I don't want us to be confused

that this love is the same love that we share with friends and

family. It's not.

It is actually freeing for us to realize that the sort of love

we're talking about is does not need to have the warm fuzzies

and affection for those who literally have ill will and ill

intent toward you. Agape does not need feelings for

it to be effectual. So when we say things like love

your enemies do good to those who hate you, we are saying that

we are actively seeking their goods.

We're actively seeking and desiring their good.

That's how we should understand the kind of love that Jesus is

talking about here. It's an undeserved love simply

because it's what Jesus calls us to and it is the right thing to

do regardless of how we feel. But it forces us to ask a really

important question. Who is my enemy?

It's not language we use often in our world today.

Who is my enemy? It's a question I wrestle with a

lot. My mind immediately goes toward

works of fiction, films, shows, novels, video games where there

is a very clear, very obvious enemy.

They're the ones doing the bad thing.

And sometimes, you know, there's, they mix it up a little

bit and the bad guy ends up being the good guy and good guy

ends up being the bad guy. But generally speaking, there is

always an obvious enemy by the end that has been triumphed over

and the Kingdom is restored to peace.

That's not most of our reality though, right?

In Jesus's day though. However, there was a clear and

present threat to the people here in Jesus's words.

When they heard Jesus say Love your enemies, they would have

likely heard love your Roman occupiers.

That's what they would have heard.

Love the people that are actively seeking to hurt and

oppress them. Love the people that are

exorbitantly taxing and impoverishing them.

Love the people that are causing them physical harm and violence.

This was not theoretical for them.

Sometimes it feels a little theoretical for me, but was not

for them. There would have almost

certainly been factions within the Jewish people as well, that

there would have been maybe some infighting.

There was, you know, groups like the mixed ethnicity Samaritans.

There was the Zealots, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the

Essenes. There was no shortage of people

to have disagreement with, even hate filled and violent

disagreements. Jesus's words would have been

explosive for his followers. Explosive.

Their minds were being filled automatically with people who

had actively seeked to harm and wronged them.

And depending on the life you've lived, that may not be your

reality. And depending on the life you've

lived, maybe that is your reality or has been your

reality. Because the reality is we have

it pretty good here in Guelph. It's not perfect.

Cost of living has become an increasing issue.

There are challenges that we all face, but we are not under

imminent threat of occupation at the moment.

To clarify that, we may have religious disagreements, we may

have political disagreements, policy disagreements, but I have

never looked at an average citizen with whom I may have

some disagreements with and said they are my sworn enemy.

Hasn't happened, but when we think about today, what about

the Jewish community who have seen a significant uptick in

anti-Semitic thought and action? Even for those who have nothing

to do with what's happening in the Middle East?

What about the Palestinian community who are continuing to

face violence and starvation at every turn?

Or what about our black siblings who frequently bear the brunt of

racial injustice? Or Christians in parts of the

world where they face persecution and violence and the

threat of death and imprisonment just simply for reading the

Scriptures. If I were to create an

exhaustive list, we would not be able to go home.

So if I had to not say the thing that you were thinking about

when I talked about that, just forgive me.

I can only say so many things. The fact that there is so much

of this only strengthens Jesus's call for us.

Countless people groups around the world face genuine hatred

and violence on a daily basis. They are enemies in the same

sense that Jesus is hears, would have heard and understood.

But I go back to the question, do I have enemies?

Do you have enemies? It's worth asking.

I have people in my life that have deeply hurt me.

I also have people in my life that I have hurt deeply.

I've been affected by people where I could maybe use the word

enemy. And also there have been times

where arguably I was the enemy, I was the bad guy.

I just think it's worth taking a moment to consider, to think

about what that looks like for us to understand our own

terminology. What do we mean when we say the

word love? What do we mean when we say

enemy? The terms can be a little bit

nonspecific, a little bit nebulous until we put a little

bit of skin on them. So I I've worked on sort of

defining this a little bit. This is not perfect, but it's

sort of like I'm workshopping this definition a little bit.

It's this unconditionally love and actively seek good for those

who seek to work against you. Bless them, pray for them, and

then Jesus gets very, very specific.

Look at these examples. So at first one, if someone

slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other.

Now this is a back of the hand slap.

OK, not inherently violent, like you're not going to kill or

knock someone out that way, but there's obviously some

physicality to it. The intent was to send a

message. This would have been understood

as more of an insult. Now the Bible project, they call

it the severest public affront to a person's dignity.

So this was meant to be a public spectacle of insults and if you

were backhandedly slapped you would have been severely

insulted. It was meant to demean and

humiliate and Jesus says give them the other cheek.

A couple of things here that I think really matter for how we

see and understand this and the rest of the text.

Jesus is calling his followers to confound the person to

subvert their expectations. Rather than being a pushover,

the person is actually reclaiming their agency by

outright rejecting their insults.

And I want to visualize this, so I'm going to invite someone up

and slap them Anderson. So OK, so I'm not I'm not

actually going to do it. I so, but I actually, I'm a

visual person. I needed like a little bit of a

visualization for what this looks like.

So if I were to backhandedly slap Anderson, I would, you know

that, right? And then the idea is he would

give me his other cheek, his left cheek.

And what I would be forced to do if I were to slap again, I would

have to use the front of my hand because I can't use my left

hand. That's totally out of the

question in that culture. So I would have to use the palm

of my hand on that side. Thank you, Anderson.

So I primed him for that. Just so you know, he he knew

that was coming, texted him yesterday and said, hey, can I

slap you tomorrow at church? So what the palm indicated, it

was actually a symbolic thing that would suggest I am actually

your equal. So if you're going to slap me

with your palm, it tells you. It's telling me, it's telling

that person and telling the people around that I if you're

going to stop me again, do it. But that makes me an equal.

I am on equal footing with you. So again, is this is this idea

of the person reclaiming what was meant to be an insult?

They're not just sitting down and taking it.

They're saying I will not play this game, I will not stoop to

the level, offer the other cheek, give to everyone who

asks, and even if they take stuff, don't demand it back.

Similarly, this is about not letting their actions hold

weight over you. It's about not letting them have

control over you. And then we have the matter of

giving the coats. Says if someone gives If someone

takes your coats, do not withhold your shirt from them.

This would have likely led to a person being basically naked, so

I'm not going to use a visual for this one.

It's kind of like the person says to them, OK, you're gonna

unjustly take my coat, why don't you take my shirt too?

You know, how about you just take it all?

It's an exceptionally vulnerable place to be in, especially

considering that those articles of clothing were often meant to

keep them warm at night as well. The folks at the Bible Project

say it this way. They say this obvious

vulnerability forces an opponents to publicly confront

his callous greed in literally taking the clothes off of the

other person's back. And that person's radical

generosity would have would present a striking contrast

against their opponents. Tight fisted, grasping.

This person was confronted with their own selfishness because

the reality is more often than not, they were taking the coats

or the cloak as a collateral for often an unjust lawsuit.

The person was extorting them. It was a shakedown.

That's what it was. So you could imagine a person in

power, a Roman centurion or soldier, they would go to your

average citizen and they would say, hey, I saw you do that

thing over there. I need you to I want to arrest

you, but I need your cloak. And so it was often an unjust

shakedown. Again, the response here is a

subversive, creative, nonviolent resistance that is

simultaneously generous, loving, but also confronts the

perpetrator. In both of these examples, Jesus

is not suggesting that we become doormats.

He's not suggesting that we Simply put up with coercion and

violence. He's not suggesting that we

remain in an abusive relationship.

I want to make that abundantly clear.

This is not about refusing to defend yourself if someone comes

at you with a baseball bat. And it isn't about being devoid

of boundaries. That's not what Jesus is saying

here, and to excuse that would be abuse and coercion in of

itself. Jesus is showing us a different

way in the life of the Kingdom, that violence and greed will

only be. Get more violence and more greed

and that we don't have to play the game, we don't have to

reciprocate. We can choose a better path.

And then Jesus says at the very bottom here, Oh, I gotta go back

here, says do to others as you would have them do to you.

What do we call that? Golden rule?

Golden rule so. Some of you may know that this

is basically a codified universal law.

Nearly every belief system, culture, religion, philosophy

has some version of this rule. So what Jesus is saying here

when he says the Golden Rule, it would have been understood.

It would have been common knowledge.

In some ways, people of all belief systems can be virtuous

and loving, but as we'll see in a second, Jesus is about to say

and do something different as he takes this principle further.

Jesus is doing what he does best and what he's doing all the way

along here. He is subverting expectations.

He's taking this well known principle and he expands upon it

in a way that's challenging to even the most moral and even the

most ethical person you could imagine.

Think about the best person you know.

Think about the most like virtuous person you know.

Jesus is going to be challenging even them.

One commentator, they say it like this.

They say the Christian ethic is based on the extra thing.

It's based on the extra thing. So Jesus expands on this famous

principle and in some ways he blows it up.

Now this second section, it sort of repeats a few things that I

want us to draw our attention to.

So if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?

So what credit is that to you? Repeat that.

And then he says, even sinners, even sinners love, love those

who love them. And if you do good to those who

are good to you again, what credit is that to them?

What crate is that to you? Again, even sinners do that.

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayments,

again what credit is that to you?

And again, even sinners land to sinners expecting to be paid in

full. In the Kingdom of God, we don't

just look after one another. We don't just love people who we

get along with in our affinity group, we don't just do nice

things for those who can reciprocate, and we don't just

lend to those who we know can give it back.

We are not a bank that needs collateral.

Yes, everyone does that, St. Sinner alike.

This is nothing new. Jesus, however, is doing

something new. This is what he's doing.

To love only those who love us, to do good to only those who can

do that do good to us, to lend to only those who can repay.

That is common. It's easy.

It requires no extra grace on our behalf.

Three times, he says. What credit is that to you?

That was a question we asked on Wednesday night because we were

kind of curious about that. It's curious with the language

of it. It, it seems almost economical.

But what's interesting is that word credits.

I don't know what I just did. Grandma need to come and help

me. Nope, Nope.

Grants coming. I'll just, I'll just keep going

of that word credit. It's one word that I did not

expect. It's the word grace.

It's the word chorus. Thank.

Thank you, Sir. I'm not So another way to say

this. So again, credits equals grace,

which is the Greek word chorus. Another way to say this might be

this. When you're only doing what is

common to everyone, how is that extending grace?

How is that showcasing generosity?

Even even sinners do that. We all do that.

This is common. Jesus is calling us to be

uncommon because again, Jesus is talking about love that is not

love that is just common love. It is agape love, transcendence,

unconditional, unmerited love. And the implication is that the

stakes are greater and higher and wider with this sort of

love. It's not a love that is

contained to those who just look, act, and think like us.

It's a love that is not. It's not a love that is merely

reciprocal or transactional. Jesus continues.

He says, But love your enemies, do good to them and lend to them

without expecting to get anything back.

It almost kind of feels like this is like his, like, summary

statement. He's like, OK folks, let's just

recap real quick, you know, love your enemies, do good, lend.

Just making sure we got the points.

I will notice that that last little bit here, lending to them

without expecting anything in return.

That to me brings back memories of all the way back in Luke

Luke 4 · chapter mention

chapter 4 when Jesus begins his ministry, he opens the scroll

from Isaiah and he reads about the Kingdom being enacted and

the year of the Lord's favor favor or the year of Jubilee,

which would have erased debts. Kind of has that vibe to it.

A little bit of saying lend knowing that you won't get it

back, but he ends this section by saying then your reward will

be great. You will be children of the Most

High because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Now we might read this so the word and might trip us up a

little bit and can mean a bunch of things.

It could also be read as that is.

So imagine this. Then your reward will be great,

that is you will be children of the Most High.

So it's cause and effect. But wait, aren't we supposed to

be doing all of this as Jesus was saying earlier, not

expecting anything? Return yes.

And isn't all of us not supposed to be transactional?

Yes, what Jesus is doing here is he is simply stating a reality.

He is stating a fact that when we live in this way, we live as

children of God. We live as recipients and heirs

of grace, as citizens of the Kingdom, even when we don't

deserve it. And he calls us to treat others

in this same way, to be merciful, to give unmerited,

unwarranted love and grace to those who do not deserve it.

You're all good. It's a lot like it feels

weighty. It feels really difficult.

This sort of agape love is not difficult to comprehend or

understand, but it is difficult to do.

It is scarce. It's one thing to understand,

it's another thing to do, someone at my table group

actually said. And I agree with them in some

ways, they said. Doesn't it feel impossible?

Like, yeah, it kind of does. I wouldn't blame you if you felt

like that. But what I would not want is for

us walking away from today feeling like it's all futile.

We just put our hands up and walk away.

Like I just, I can't do it, can't do it.

We shouldn't even try. We can't do that.

The stakes are too high. If there's anything that

followers of Jesus have been accused of over the years, it's

that we are not living out this very command right.

We've become well known to many over the generations as

hypocrites and fraudulence and worse, so we can't just afford

to ignore this because it's hard.

If we are Jesus's representatives on earth, this

is mission critical. So with the time we have left, I

want to get us thinking a little bit, a little bit about how we

actually do this work. I wanna get return to that

question. Who is my enemy?

It matters as we think about how to live this out.

So who are the people who have caused you harm, whether

emotional or physical? Who are the people over the

years that have insulted you in some way or another?

Who are the people who seem bent on making your life miserable?

Does anyone have anyone in their life that they just?

It seems like maybe it's a coworker or something like that.

Don't raise your hands that just they make your life miserable.

Now, it's kind of a light version of this, I recognize,

but I just want to, I want, I want to.

If we can't do it in the small things, we're going to start

doing the bigger things, right? Chances are you could probably

think of a situation or two. So here are a few ways in which

we can embody what Jesus is challenging us with here.

Firstly, is this resist the temptation to fight back, as we

saw in the example of the slap and the cloak.

There is a season in my life where I used to be pretty feisty

online and on social media. I occasionally get myself in

trouble where I'd get a friend texting me.

But like, that was a little bit a little bit too much, buddy.

I wanted to win the argument. I was often fighting with other

Christians, by the way, not just like anybody, which I know that

makes it better or worse, but I wanted to the bare minimum.

I wanted them to concede my points.

I generally wouldn't insult, but I was pretty snarky sometimes.

Sometimes, even when I was being totally earnest, though, I would

receive the most like, just bonkers responses from often

Christians. One time they insulted my hair.

That was the line for me. That was just that was that was

too much like, look, I got one good feature and it's my hair.

OK. Now, to be fair, it was like a

COVID cut that I had to do by myself.

So like maybe that was justified.

I don't know. So this would happen as I was

having like genuine discourse with someone and they would, I

would try to be like, I would like, you know, sit there for a

second. I would like do some deep

breathing. I'd pray, I'd be like, OK, I

want to engage in in a healthy way here.

And then still they would come at me and insult me.

Not just the hair, I think some people just thrive on conflict

and even cruelty at times. But as I have attempted to love

as Christ calls me to, I've learned to just start responding

in a different way with people who seem bent on

misunderstanding you. I try to respond with some

version of the following, and you can try this.

You can try this in real life, you can try it online.

Whatever I just said, be well. I hope you have a really good

day. And I try to really mean it.

Again, this is not about feelings, right?

We can't always muster up a feeling in that moment.

But I can choose to say I don't want to play this game anymore.

I don't think it's healthy for me to engage in this way.

I'm going to wish you well and truly try to meet it with all my

heart. I hope you have a great day.

It's a hard exercise for me to be able to let go, to follow

Jesus's call, to choose to love that person regardless of

whether they deserve it. After insulting my hair.

Also, this is interesting. It often makes them really upset

when you don't play the game. That's not the intention.

That's that's just a byproduct. And that says more about them

than it does about anything else that's happening there.

It says something about what's happening in their hearts.

I know this is a little bit of a silly example, but honestly,

it's a significant way that we can maintain our dignity and not

play the game that they would have us play.

We don't need to play it. We can be different.

We can be uncommon. We'll often face fights that

were never gonna be able to win. So instead of winning, try to

play their game. So stop trying to play the game

and play a different game now. I give one example here, but

your situation in context may be very different.

How you respond may need to be very different.

And to do this well over the long haul, we need Holy Spirit

inspired creativity and we need to be reflective rather than

reactive. Here's another way we can live

this out. Be gracious and generous even to

the undeserving. Now I put undeserving in

quotation marks because I think that's a highly subjective word.

Who made me? Who made you the arbiters of who

is worthy or unworthy of generosity and grace?

The whole point is that we are all undeserving.

At my previous church, we were in a high traffic area downtown

Guelph, and despite our best efforts to keep things locked

down, things would often go missing.

Yeah, Kendra knows. Kendra knows one day we had we

had a computer go missing. It was like our computer that

double does all like the screens for worship on Sundays and our

live stream and videos etcetera. It was gone.

So I looked up the security camera.

We had one kind of like just facing kind of the exterior door

out of the sanctuary and I see two teenagers now.

We had a program that was running in the IT was a upper

grand district school board program that was running out of

the school. And I kind of looked and said,

OK, it's none of them. I asked.

The teacher said, no, it's none of them.

So I called up the downtown beat cop.

He was, he was well known and actually very well loved among

the people. He came over and I, I showed him

the footage and he said I know who those people are.

I know their names here, their names and so and so and so and

so. And actually I was just chatting

with them a few minutes ago at one of the drop in centres.

I said this is great. So, so he said let me know, I'll

go talk to them. Let me know if you want to press

charges. I didn't feel good about that.

I I did not feel right about that.

I was sure, and I was correct in that assumption that the

computer was long gone. This is what happens, right?

You you know someone grabs something and what could have

gone on Facebook marketplace for 600 bucks, you sell for 100 or

$200 for whatever you need. I knew it was long gone, but I

wanted to meet with them. So we actually ended up meeting

a few times. I, I, he gave me their name and

I and I like, I found, I went on Facebook and I found them and I

said, hey, I'm just gonna shoot the messages until they respond.

And so I was persistent. So, but eventually they did.

And they're like, yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll come, we'll come.

And I met with them a couple times.

We had some really interesting chats.

I got to share a little bit of my story with them, my faith

journey. I got to hear some of their

story. As you can imagine, their story

was filled with some difficults and hard, hard things.

In some small way, I think I got to speak life into them in some

way. That was almost 10 years ago and

I still often think about where they've landed now.

I wish I could have kept in touch in some way, but I I hope

that I made a difference in their life in some way.

Now I can't claim that that has always been the case for me.

There have been times where I have sought retribution and

taken justice into my own hands, but I'm grateful for situations

like this where we get a very tangible opportunity to be

merciful as God is merciful. Yeah.

Do you know someone in your life that is in need of that kind of

mercy, that kind of grace, that kind of forgiveness?

Now, if you're someone who's very justice oriented, you're

probably like getting a little bit amped up right now.

You're like, but that's not fair.

These situations can be a pretty tough pill to swallow for some

of us who are not prone to act this way, which I think is

probably a lot of us. This is about stepping out in

faith, trusting God that our hearts will be transformed when

we choose to love this agape love, when we choose to forgive

and when we choose mercy. When Jesus told His followers to

love their enemies, I have to think he knows what he was

doing. That he was asking something

hard, that he was asking something unprecedented even.

But Jesus is inviting us to participate in his Kingdom.

That's what he's inviting us to. It's his Kingdom.

And because it's Jesus's Kingdom, He will not ask us to

do something that He himself is not willing and in fact did not

do. Merciful as.

God is merciful because Jesus went before us and He showed us

what that mercy looks like. He did this with his healing of

the sick. He did this with the forgiving

of the tax collectors. He did this by associating with

lowlifes and nobodies as well as the least of these.

And most of all, he did. This at the cross.

At the. Cross, he cried.

Out in front of the people who were literally murdering him, he

said. Father forgive them, for they do

not know what they are doing extending.

Mercy. Toward.

Those who were killing him with Jesus as our.

Forerunner, as the one who extend that same mercy to me and

to you, We have our mandates. We have our example and by the

strength. And power of the Holy.

Spirits, we can go out to our families, to our neighborhoods,

to our schools. To our.

Places of work wherever we find ourselves.

And we can, unconditionally. Love and actively seek the good

for everyone, even those who are working against us.

Let's pray. God, this is a.

Difficult word. It's not something that we.

Can do on our own strength. Or through just mustering.

Up the right feelings. God, it's.

Something that we. Need your help.

As we take a moment. Here, in the quiet of this

space, to think upon the ways in which we may need to have this

agape love for someone in our world.

Would you? Empower.

Us by your spirits. Would you allow us to experience

all that you have for us, the fullness of your love, which is

even love for the undeserving? God, we pray that you would.

Speak to. US this week.

As we. Consider how to do.

This it feels impossible sometimes.

But God where where with things that.

Seem impossible for us. We know that you can make these

things possible. Would you help us now?

As we. Seek to live out all of what you

ask of us in the Scriptures by your spirits.

Amen. Invite Christian.

Now it'll be us in the. Prayers.