But to you who are listening, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Luke 6:27-28(NIV)
Praying for your enemies is hard, but understanding the benefits of praying for your enemies will help you do it. The truth is people can be annoying—some more than others. When we get offended by others, we expect them to apologize for their actions.
Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Sometimes people will go ahead and justify their ill-treatment towards us. And this forces us to develop a wrong attitude towards them even if we once used to respect them.
But God doesn’t want us to repay others for the wrong they have done to us. Instead, He encourages us to pray for them and to let Him avenge us.
It’s tempting to want to fight back when they offend us, but it is better to let it go. When you are tempted to seek revenge against someone, take a few steps back and pray for them.
Why Should You Pray for Your Enemies?
Praying for your enemies is a powerful practice that promotes personal growth and emotional healing. Here are a few reasons why it’s beneficial:
1. Healing and Forgiveness:
Praying for your enemies helps foster a sense of forgiveness and release any anger or bitterness you may harbor. It allows you to let go of negative emotions and promotes inner peace.
2. Compassion and Understanding:
It encourages empathy and understanding by allowing you to see things from their perspective. This can lead to a more compassionate and tolerant outlook on life.
3. Spiritual Growth:
Praying for those who have wronged you aligns with many spiritual teachings about love, forgiveness, and compassion. It’s a practice that can strengthen your faith and bring you closer to your spiritual values.
4. Positive Transformation:
It can lead to positive changes in both your life and the lives of your enemies. Your prayers might inspire them to reflect on their actions and seek positive change.
5. Breaking the Cycle of Negativity:
By responding to hurt with prayer instead of anger or revenge, you contribute to breaking the cycle of negativity and promote a more positive and peaceful environment.
Below are 13 Benefits of Praying for Your Enemies.
-
Prayer Improves our Attitude towards them.
Having a bad attitude towards those who have hurt us will not solve anything. If anything, it will only cause you pain. The best way to deal with someone that has hurt you is to pray for them. (Luke 6:27-30)
Well, I know that is the last thing you want to hear, but it is the truth. A hard truth that if you do not take it seriously, you will end up being bitter in life.
Instead of holding grudges, pray for your enemies and allow God to deal with their hearts. In doing so, your attitude towards them will start to improve. And with time, you’ll find yourself having compassion for them instead of hatred or fits of rage.
-
Helps us to heal and forgive.
It’s hard to forgive the person that has hurt you deeply when you’re busy holding onto grudges. But you get to enjoy the benefits of praying for your enemies when you let go and God. Instead of reliving all the bad things your enemy has done to you, how about praying for them?
It’s by praying for such people that you’re able to heal. God will deal with your heart and remove all the bad memories from your mind. You may say that you will deal with the hurt in your heart by yourself. But let’s be honest, some things are difficult to handle in our own power.
We need the intervention of God for us to forgive some people completely. If we try doing it our way, we’ll keep going back to what they did to us. But when God heals our hearts, we shall not become angry again when we are in the same space with these people.
-
Prayer Helps to Transform our Enemies.
Some people do not care about others. They will keep on hurting you if you don’t set boundaries between you and them. Trying to resolve things with them the way the Bible tells us may not work.
Now, there’s a saying that goes hurt people hurt others. These people may be hurting on the inside. They are so blinded with the hurt that they don’t see their mistakes.
But there is one that can change anyone because nothing is too complicated for Him. He may not change these people the way we want. But He’ll deal with them in the best way possible.
It is only God that can heal those people that are hurting. Maybe all that your enemy needs is healing in their hearts. Praying for them will open up doors for God to touch their hearts. And remove the hurt that they are carrying.
-
Praying for your Enemies is an Act of Obedience.
The word of God tells us to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). It means that when we pray for our enemies, we are actually walking in obedience.
Many of us spend time speaking ill of people who have wronged us. Yes, you may feel justified to talk about these people. And even revenge, but the best way to deal with them is to pray for them. It’s only in doing so that you leave what they have done to you to God.
-
Removes the Desire for Revenge.
If you have never felt like revenging, you’ve not been hurt. However spiritual you are, there’s going to come a time when someone is going to hurt. They’ll do it to the point where you’ll be tempted to avenge for all the things they’ve done to you. But you need to remember that you are a child of God.
Even though Jesus was fully God and He could have prevented the Pharisees from crucifying him. Jesus remained obedient to the point of death. God did not force Jesus to die on the cross for us. It was His personal choice to die for humanity. Jesus would have called an army from heaven to fight on His behalf, but He didn’t.
Jesus went through so much humiliation, but he remained obedient. If Jesus did not avenge, then why should we go ahead with revenge? Let us remain submitted to God by praying for our enemies. God will come through for us one way or another.
-
Prayer produces Inner Peace.
When you spend time communicating with your heavenly father, you are left with peace in your heart. So when someone hurts us, they destabilize us emotionally, and our hearts end up being filled up with so much turmoil.
When your enemies mistreat, you do not try to fight back in your own strength. Turn to God and pray. Pour out your feelings, and do not be afraid to tell Him exactly how you feel about that person.
If you are angry, tell God just that. He can handle anything that is in your heart. By the time you are done praying, you will have inner peace. Remember, the enemy cannot defeat a Christian that is walking in peace.
-
Praying for Others is the Right Thing to do.
Just because something looks okay doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to do. Holding grudges seems okay. After all, the person in question has hurt you. But it is not right for believers to do it.
You will lose a lot if you keep holding grudges and hating people for the wrong that they have done to you. See, there is a battle that is raging in our lives. And like any good soldier, we need to focus on the right enemy.
This brings us to the next point.
-
Enables us to Acknowledge the Real Enemy.
Your enemy is not the brother, sister, parent, or neighbor who keeps making your life difficult. The real enemy is Satan and his cohorts of demons (Ephesians 6:12). They are out there ready to kill, destroy and steal from you. So you need to be very careful with the way you handle people who treat you badly.
These people are working together with the enemy knowingly or unknowingly. Even as you pray, don’t ask God to avenge by destroying these people.
Instead, go for the real enemy that uses these people as a vessel to make your life difficult. As you pray, God will show you who your real enemy is. And how to fight against his devices so that you can walk in victory.
-
Opens up doors for God to work on their Hearts.
As we have already seen, we cannot deal with other people’s hearts in our own strength. It is only God that can transform people to be like Jesus. Instead of fighting people that you call enemies, pray for them. Ask the Holy Spirit to work on the hearts.
Some people hurt you because they see something in you that they desire. They don’t know how to get it or just don’t want to go through the process.
Instead of humbling themselves so that you can teach them, they attack your personality because they are jealous. It is only by praying for them that God can deal with their hearts.
-
Enables God to Fight your Battle.
God tells us that vengeance is His (Romans 12:19). He tells us to put coals of fire on our enemies by doing good to them.
One of the best ways that you can do that is by praying for your enemies. You may decide to avenge someone who has hurt you, but it will not measure up to God’s vengeance.
When God fights for you, those that are fighting against you will know that He is God. He will not leave any stone unturned. But you need to practice patience because God also gives people time to repent.
As you wait for God to fight for you, pray for your enemies and do not despise them. And when avenges don’t go around celebrating. Continue praying for these people’s hearts.
-
Improves our Prayer Life.
Do you know that praying for your enemies may actually lead to an improvement in your prayer life?
You may start off by complaining, but God will deal with your heart as time goes on. With time you will start to pray for other things that you may have overlooked previously.
See, God has a way of turning our pain into lessons. As you pray for your enemy, He may reveal to you things about Himself and even the person that hurt you. He may also show you something about yourself that you need to pray for or deal with.
When this happens, you will keep turning to Him for help, and this will cause your prayer life to improve tremendously. See, the benefits of praying for your enemies are not just for your enemies but also for you.
-
It helps you see your Own Faults.
Let’s be honest, there are times we get angry with others but fail to see our faults. When you’re so bitter, you may fail to see your own fault. Yet your mistake may have led someone to act a certain way. Not that their reaction towards you is justified.
But it also doesn’t mean that your own actions are justified. It is through prayer that God can reveal our faults. If we had refused to forgive our enemies before, prayer will help us to forgive them. God will show us their side of the story and how we hurt them. He doesn’t do this to condemn us but to help us heal.
See, not everyone that hurts you does it intentionally. Someone may feel like you are attacking them. And instead of backing away, they may try to attack you, hence leading to confrontations and even physical fights.
-
Helps Us to Grow Spiritually.
One of the most significant benefits of praying for your enemies is it enables you to grow spiritually. The more you pray for them, the deeper your faith grows and the closer you get to God.
Praying for your enemies also opens up your heart to understand God’s, unconditional love. We get to understand the great lengths God went to forgive us our sins. When this happens, it causes you to fall deeper in love with God.
In conclusion:
We have talked about the different benefits of praying for your enemies in this article. But we need to know that it takes willingness and total surrender for you to pray for your enemy.
God has given us the gift of choice. It is up to us to choose whether to forgive or not. Forgiveness doesn’t just happen, especially when someone has hurt you deeply. It takes grace. It also takes a lot of grace for us to pray for them.
Always remember that we are not fighting against flesh and blood. We are fighting against principalities, powers, and rulers in high places. So we need to be careful not to look at fellow men as our enemy. They are only agents or vessels that the enemy is using to get to us.
We need to focus on the real enemy, and that is the devil. He loves hiding behind other people so that we may focus on them instead of him. We need to always be vigilant so that we don’t fall for his schemes.