{"id":717,"date":"2010-09-11T19:57:11","date_gmt":"2010-09-11T19:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html"},"modified":"2010-09-11T19:57:11","modified_gmt":"2010-09-11T19:57:11","slug":"a-prayer-for-our-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html","title":{"rendered":"A Prayer for Our Enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A difficult thing for me to do is pray for my enemies. Today, on September 11th, &nbsp;I&#8217;m reminded of the evil in the world and how many enemies all of us have. What is our response? In Matthew 5:44 Jesus instructs us to pray for them: &#8220;<span class=\"Apple-style-span\">But I tell you: Love your enemies&nbsp;and pray for those who persecute you.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">This is what Christ followers do. This is the new way of living in the Kingdom of God. It&#8217;s also life to our souls. Pray this prayer for our enemies today, even if it&#8217;s hard.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Times;font-size: medium\">&#8220;Lord Jesus Christ, Who commands us to love our enemies, and those who defame and injure us, and to pray for them and forgive them; Who also prayed for Your enemies, who crucified you: grant us, we pray, the spirit of Christian reconciliation and meekness, that we may heartily forgive every injury and be reconciled with our enemies. Grant us to overcome the malevolence and offences of people with Christian meekness and true love of our neighbor. O Lord, grant to our enemies true peace and forgiveness of sins; and do not allow them to leave this life without true faith and sincere conversion. And help us repay evil with goodness, and to remain safe from the temptations of the devil and from all the perils which threaten us, in the form of visible and invisible enemies. Amen.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A difficult thing for me to do is pray for my enemies. Today, on September 11th, &nbsp;I&#8217;m reminded of the evil in the world and how many enemies all of us have. What is our response? In Matthew 5:44 Jesus instructs us to pray for them: &#8220;But I tell you: Love your enemies&nbsp;and pray for&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Prayer for Our Enemies - Red Letters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Prayer for Our Enemies - Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A difficult thing for me to do is pray for my enemies. Today, on September 11th, &nbsp;I&#8217;m reminded of the evil in the world and how many enemies all of us have. What is our response? 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Today, on September 11th, &nbsp;I&#8217;m reminded of the evil in the world and how many enemies all of us have. What is our response? In Matthew 5:44 Jesus instructs us to pray for them: &#8220;But I tell you: Love your enemies&nbsp;and pray for&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html","og_site_name":"Red Letters","article_published_time":"2010-09-11T19:57:11+00:00","author":"Tom Davis","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html","name":"A Prayer for Our Enemies - Red Letters","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-09-11T19:57:11+00:00","dateModified":"2010-09-11T19:57:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#\/schema\/person\/c78d22af30aa2e0860a621fadf855b92"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/09\/a-prayer-for-our-enemies.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Prayer for Our Enemies"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/","name":"Red Letters","description":"Christian, Christian Inspiration, Christian News, Christian Activism News","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#\/schema\/person\/c78d22af30aa2e0860a621fadf855b92","name":"Tom Davis","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b5c\/b5c5842c5b6dd6c51062873d0bb1dfafx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b5c\/b5c5842c5b6dd6c51062873d0bb1dfafx96.jpg","caption":"Tom Davis"},"description":"Tom Davis currently serves as CEO of Children's HopeChest (www.hopechest.org), a global orphan care ministry headquartered in Colorado Springs. A tireless advocate for fatherless children, Davis has spent most of his adult life calling U.S. believers to become the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to the 143 million orphans living around the world. Through those connections, thousands of orphans now have the bright and hopeful future--one that is filled with opportunities and the love of the one true Father. Davis speaks hundreds of times each year at churches and conferences, mobilizing the church to action on behalf of the poor. He is the author of four books. His most recent novel, SCARED is a fictionalized account of his first-hand experiencing living and working with orphans in Swaziland, Africa. Davis' blog is the premier resource for the latest developments in Christian orphan ministry. Davis also currently teaches courses as adjunct professor at George Fox University in Newberg, OR. When not traveling the globe, Davis resides in the mountains of Colorado in the small community of Palmer Lake. He and his wife Emily have seven children, including two adopted daughters from Russia.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/author\/tdavis"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}