the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Voice of the Lord
Love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! (Matthew 5:44).
The power to bless is stronger than the power to curse. God has provided us with the opportunity to choose one or the other. Just as our people stood before Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and were faced with the choice of blessings or curses, so we today are presented with that same choice in serving the Lord.
One day I was handing out gospel tracts on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. A Jewish man approached me and angrily said, "You're leading Israel astray and bringing a curse down on your head." Then he said, "I'm going to stand here and pray that God curse you. You pray to your Jesus that he curse me and we'll see whose God is stronger." I had never faced such a situation before, but I found myself saying to him, "You can pray a curse on me, but I'm going to pray that God bless you by giving you the knowledge that Yeshua really is the Messiah." He began to pray in Hebrew and I in English.
Several days later, a whole group was going to hand out tracts at the beach. We pulled into the parking lot, and who should be standing there, but this man who had pronounced the curse. Now he was surrounded by a whole group of Jewish believers in Yeshua. At that moment, I realized God was answering my prayer and revealing himself in a special way to this man. The power to bless is stronger than the power to curse.
...look for opportunities to bless rather than curse those who may mistreat me.
DB
The Voice of the Lord, Copyright © 1998 by the Lewis and Harriet Lederer Foundation, Inc. Published by Messianic Jewish Publishers, Distributed by Messianic Jewish Resources, www.messianicjewish.net. All rights reserved. Used by permission. No part of this article may be reproduced in print or on the web, or transmitted in any form, without the written permission of the publisher.
