Loving Enemies and Not Being Judgmental

     Luke 6:27-28+31+33-35; Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love you enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High.
     This is hard. I personally have never had someone abused me, but I know people who have. When you choose to forgive, it is a beautiful thing. I think the reason Jesus told us to forgive those who have done us wrong is because when we make that choice to let the anger and hate go, we are changed for the better. It hurts us to keep grudges. God did not want us to have that on our mind.
     Luke 6:37; Do not judge, and you will not be judged. This scripture is really big to me because I and a lot of my friends constantly worry about people judging us. We are afraid of what others think. But the truth is, if we would work on not judging others, we would not have to worry about it. First, we need to fix our own problems of being judgmental. Luke 6:41+45; Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 45 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.  Before I judge or try to fix others,  I need to look at my own heart and see if it is focusing on what is pure, noble, and true. It is difficult to be honest and noble in a world where most people are not, but God is the judge. When judgement day comes, he will not look at the other people around me, but only at my heart. He will look at what I said and did. He will not say, "Well, that person provoked you to do wrong, so I guess that is not your fault." It is up to me to be the best me. I cannot change everyone else, but I can change myself. So, I will work on forgiving, thinking noble thoughts, and not being judgmental.

~Daughter of the Light