{"id":1690,"date":"2011-12-01T12:12:33","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T16:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=1690"},"modified":"2011-12-01T12:12:33","modified_gmt":"2011-12-01T16:12:33","slug":"love-your-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=1690","title":{"rendered":"Love Your Enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cYou have heard that it was said, &#8216;Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.&#8217;\u00a0But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,\u00a0that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.\u00a0If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?\u00a0And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?\u00a0Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.\u201d \u2013 Matthew 5:43-48 (ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong><em>One of the most difficult things we\u2019re called to do as Followers of Christ is to place aside our negative feelings and anger against those we feel have wronged us.\u00a0 Instead of carrying those poison \u201cseeds\u201d around in our spirits, we\u2019re instructed to forgive, and then lift them up in prayer and release that burden into our Heavenly Father\u2019s capable hands.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cYou have heard that it was said, &#8216;Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.&#8217;\u00a0But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,\u00a0that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2088],"tags":[3194,1360,656,1180,2235,1690,2233,783,2234],"class_list":["post-1690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-inspirations","tag-daily-inspirations","tag-followers-of-christ","tag-forgive","tag-gospel-of-matthew","tag-lift-in-prayer","tag-love-your-enemies","tag-love-your-neighbor","tag-matthew","tag-poison-seeds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-rg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1693,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions\/1693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}