Lord, I see a war that is so brutal it is impossible to tell who is fighting whom. We are all fighting each other. We have lost sense of whom our enemy is. This is how the enemy prevails. He uses us to take down each other. He plants hatred. This is our weapon, but we don’t use it against Satan the enemy. We grow hatred toward one another. We cannot see God in the midst. We are too busy fighting. The Word is stomped under our feet. It is buried in our hearts, sunken, under ashes. We have left it behind. This war is among believers in Christ. And when the strangers come along needing Him, there is nobody to teach. We are too bloodied by war, if we are alive at all.
Then, in the dirt, in the midst of the blood, we find the bodies of those who used to be those we loved. We cry over them. But our tears are bitter. For we remember we loved them once. Only now it is too late. And we see they are not just dead. Some still breathe, but are dead in their souls. Others are dead altogether. The tragedy is we killed them ourselves because we forgot how to love or never learned at all.
We killed them with our words, we killed them in our hearts, with our neglect. Oh sure, we handed them food – sometimes – and sometimes a bed to lay down. But in our hearts we held back the very thing they needed – the mercy of Jesus, the Word of God, the “sword of truth”, the love that never fails. Our love failed, and we turned to hatred, and we killed them.
And then we look around us, at the people standing outside, watching us standing over the dead bodies. And the enemy laughs, for those who stand watching from the outside, we withheld from them the very thing they needed. Jesus. They will die also, and they will not die at our hands. For we never took the time to know them at all, for we were too busy killing our own.
We were so far from unity in the Body of Christ we killed our own through what some call friendly fire, but it wasn’t friendly at all. And the ones outside will die because we were too busy killing our own soldiers to reach out and love them with the love of Jesus. In fact, we forgot about the love of Jesus altogether. Who is Jesus anyway?
We will turn to Him in the end, and that is when He will say He never knew us. Oh sure, we could talk about Him. We could even profess His name. But if the truth be known, we became consumed in war. He would have rescued us all. But we were too busy. Killing.
And all along Jesus reached out His hand to us and longed to gather us into His fold and keep us safe there forever. But we didn’t even look His way. We were too busy, after all. Too busy for Jesus. Too busy for love. It is not too late, but it will be soon.
Remember who your enemy is. And when you look down at the dying bodies, or around you at those you have never known, will you remember this? Jesus saves, and His love never fails, and you have a responsibility. It is not to kill. It is to love. It to be in His Word. It is to apply His Word to the world. It is not to kill. It is to breathe life into a broken world.
He is the breath of life. He is the jaws of life. Do not turn away from the one who is hurting you. Do not lash out at him or her. Nor cut him or her with your mouth or abuse him or her with your heart. Reach out and show him or her Jesus. There will be one less body lying on the ground.
You will be amazed at what you see. This is the one you used to love. Your human love failed. But God’s never does. Rise up and persevere. Do not give up. Look up. Let Him teach you how to love.
Mat 7:21 KJV “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Mat 7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
Mat 7:23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Mat 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
Mat 7:25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
Mat 7:26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
Mat 7:27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.”