“Your ancestors have also been taught ‘Love your neighbors and hate the one who hates you.’ However, I say to you, love your enemy, bless the one who curses you, do something wonderful for the one who hates you, and respond to the very ones who persecute you by praying for them. For that will reveal your identity as children of your heavenly Father. He is kind to all by bringing the sunrise to warm and rainfall to refresh whether a person does what is good or evil. What reward do you deserve if you only love the loveable? Don’t even the tax collectors do that? How are you any different from others if you limit your kindness only to your friends? Don’t even the ungodly do that? Since you are children of a perfect Father in heaven, you are to be perfect like him.”
Matthew 5:43‭-‬48 TPT

Wow!

When Jesus has filled us with His joy through the Holy Spirit, this is much easier. But there are times when it can be more difficult. Times when we would rather ignore someone than go out of our way to be generous and kind. Or succumb to the temptation to make a nasty remark about them, or do something unloving. Things Jesus wouldn’t do.

Let’s pray continually that we will be filled with His Spirit, and exemplify Jesus, who didn’t come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Who became obedient to death, even death on the cross (Phil. 2:8). Who lived out Luke 4:18-19:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”