Love All, Pray and Be Renewed in Spirit, Know We are Citizens of Heaven, Not of This World!

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

⏤ Matthew 5:44 

Prayer is the pulse of the renewed soul — and the constancy of its beat is the test and measure of the spiritual life! 

⏤ Octavius Winslow

It is hard to be like Jesus, to love everyone. We must try. We do try the best we can. We went to a church for the past 2+ years, but we never felt the priest liked us, he was so indifferent, would never talk to us, look at us, he completely ignored us, we would see him in the gym, he was the same, never could be bothered by us. We just accepted him for being rude, insecure, and wrestling with his own demons as the reasons. We just put God first, Jesus is our King and we only put Him on a pedestal, not a priest, as he is only human like us. We both pray a lot and I always pray for priests. Unfortunately, we have seen a few bad clergy, they are human nonetheless, but not as Christ-like as you may hope. We just need to pray for all. We need to live in Spirit and not of this world, even when people dislike you, even priest, you need to love them, forgive them, and sometimes treat them like a gentile or tax-collector like the Bible reading this week talked about. My goal is to get into Heaven as I feel I am a Citizen of Heaven, not this world anyway. Jesus can help you get there, He gave us an example to follow and He is the only one to follow, not a priest or another human being who is broken and with sin too. 

The Mornings with God App had a nice write-up today about a lot of this. They said, "Father, it is not a holy world into which we must now go forth. It is full of sin. We must meet many temptations. Then it is not an easy life into which we have to go. It has its tasks, its duties, its responsibilities, and its conflicts. We shall have our burdens to carry, and our duties to do.

Yet we would not refuse to go forth into the world. It is Your voice that calls us forth — and wherever Your voice calls us we would go without hesitation. We have no strength or wisdom of our own to make us equal to all the work and struggle of the day — but we know that when You send us forth, You will give us all the strength and wisdom we shall need. You have promised that as our days — so shall our strength be.

Fill us with Your grace, that we may be able to move through this evil world without faltering in our faithfulness. We are not of the world — but belong to Heaven, are citizens of the kingdom of Jesus. Help us to live out here on earth, our true life, the life of Jesus, the life of Heaven. May we be enabled to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. May we live so purely, so earnestly, with such abundant life, that our influence shall be a real force for Jesus.

We ask for grace to make our common week-day work holy and beautiful, with the beauty of Christlikeness. May we be as Jesus to every one we meet. In our social life, our business, our household cares, in all our friendships, in our very play — may we show the sweetness of the love of Jesus. May You keep us, each and all, in all our goings and comings. Bless us — and use us to bless the world. Bring us together in the evening. We ask all these favors for Jesus' sake. Amen."

We need to keep the faith, put Jesus first, and work toward getting into Heaven, bless this world and do the best you can, while there will be challenges, Jesus is there to get us through them. He too was persecuted by the priests, pharisees, and scribes, they after all wanted Him dead as He called them on their hypocrisy and not practicing what they preach. We need to be people of honor, upright, holy, Christ-like, and loving!