It has been placed on my heart to be honest in truth, no longer caring to please the listener by honing off truth. By grace seasoned with love, we are to speak fervent truth undivided and without surety. While I had always considered my words to be honest, the Lord showed me though the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon that I was tempered in truth, short on instruction and caring too much of what the listener thought. By God's grace, I shall submit to His leading.
A Buddhist and I discussed loving our enemy, or at the very least, a person who challenges our happiness. While they insisted loving the enemy was impossible, but instead it is a mental choice by control of feelings to suspend the animosity, I differed from a Christian perspective.
Attempting to control feelings is as vain as try...ing to suspend the lusts of the flesh, where feelings are of the base or carnal nature, capable of being deceptive. By "feeling" we can be convinced we are victorious when living in blind delusion. Feelings and emotions are never weapons to weld when dealing with internal conflicts.
When we forgo ourselves as the ultimate end, instead replacing eternal, spirit and divine as preeminent, we no longer need to defend self. Once values are redirected to the eternal, the temporal ceases to have power over us and one’s enemy is seen as a fellow sojourner with the same mercy we long to know. No fear or defense is needed against a temporal inconvenience when the perspective is properly aligned with the eternal Father. The enemy or trying person becomes worthy of compassion and longsuffering when viewed from a detached position of the eternal from God's vantage point.
While someone may be worthy of distain and rejection by the balances of the law, they are instead now subject to compassion and understanding as a soul worthy of boundless grace. To love your enemy is possible, but only to those who approach from a transformed heart in humility. The casual passerby of truth as an interesting study cannot hope to grasp the depth of God's wisdom. Such attainments by the mysteries of Christ (Eph. 3:4) are truly arduous.
A Buddhist and I discussed loving our enemy, or at the very least, a person who challenges our happiness. While they insisted loving the enemy was impossible, but instead it is a mental choice by control of feelings to suspend the animosity, I differed from a Christian perspective.
Attempting to control feelings is as vain as try...ing to suspend the lusts of the flesh, where feelings are of the base or carnal nature, capable of being deceptive. By "feeling" we can be convinced we are victorious when living in blind delusion. Feelings and emotions are never weapons to weld when dealing with internal conflicts.
When we forgo ourselves as the ultimate end, instead replacing eternal, spirit and divine as preeminent, we no longer need to defend self. Once values are redirected to the eternal, the temporal ceases to have power over us and one’s enemy is seen as a fellow sojourner with the same mercy we long to know. No fear or defense is needed against a temporal inconvenience when the perspective is properly aligned with the eternal Father. The enemy or trying person becomes worthy of compassion and longsuffering when viewed from a detached position of the eternal from God's vantage point.
While someone may be worthy of distain and rejection by the balances of the law, they are instead now subject to compassion and understanding as a soul worthy of boundless grace. To love your enemy is possible, but only to those who approach from a transformed heart in humility. The casual passerby of truth as an interesting study cannot hope to grasp the depth of God's wisdom. Such attainments by the mysteries of Christ (Eph. 3:4) are truly arduous.