Day 33: Pray for the Person Who Hurt You.

I have to be honest with you. I did "Pray about the person...," the lesson leading up to this one several days ago, but I just had not been ready to pray for them until now. I do truly believe that God has used the last few days to prepare my heart to go from pouring out all of my heartache to Him to the next step in this process.

One week from today will be the end of this 40 day pilgrimage to find forgiveness in the heart of God and allow it to permeate my spirit to such a degree that my life is forever changed. I've got to tell you that there is still much progress to be made in these next seven days, but I feel sure that if I can really put today's lesson in to practice in my daily prayer time, I will reap great benefits almost immediately.

PRAY FOR THE PERSON WHO HURT YOU.
This lesson, again, comes from Beth Moore's book called Praying God's Word. It is a phenomenal book that teaches practical ways to use scripture based prayers to break common strongholds in the lives of both believers and nonbelievers. The most important question I can think to ask you before we approach this topic is, "Do you believe that the Bible is God's word and that it is true?" If you answered that question with a thoughtless, reflexive, "Yes," your faith may be in question by the time you read the following verses.

"Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called, so that you may inherit a blessing." 1 Peter 3:9
--When I read this, I want desperately to skip over the words I bolded in the middle. I want to ask the Lord to bless me while I choose to ignore one of the highest callings of my Christian faith. This is so contrary to our human nature, so absurd to the rest of the world, that acting on it may just be enough to finally make my life look different from the lives of those who don't know Jesus.

"But I say to you who are listening, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who are cruel to you." Luke 6:27-28
"If you do good only to those who do good to you, what praise should you get? Even sinners do that!" Luke 6:33
--This passage goes on to promise us a great reward for doing these things, and I have to admit I'm looking forward to that. But I also must say that instead of underlining these verses in my bible with a pen, or highlighting them in neon, I'd really like to black them out with a sharpie. As if ignoring God's word has ever done me one bit of good in my life.

However- and this is the part that's really hard to swallow- I've committed my life to following Christ, and I know my heart will never be satisfied when I choose the way of disobedience. Not finding a way to forgive, and pray blessings for, the people who I'd like to credit with ruining my plan for my life is flat out disobedient, and I will not produce any good fruit while holding on to that sin. The book I mentioned earlier suggests several scripture inspired prayers to help us get started in praying for our offenders. For the rest of this journey, I will include one of those prayers daily, and I will pray it over those who have wounded me.

I pray for ___________ that he/she will not be carnally minded, which is death, but may he/she be spiritually minded, which is life and peace. (Romans 8:6)