Thursday Morning

My Life with Brad Lincoln

Matthew 5:43–48 CSB

43 “You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

We all have people we do not like… hate even

we have our reasons

at the time they might even be reasonable

But the Lord Jesus teaches us a different way that we are supposed to treat our enemies

love

Just before this, Jesus tells us that we are to turn the other cheek when being attacked, or give out coat to the one who takes our shirt

but love your enemies

love = agapao - also used to describe the father’s love for the son, man’s love of God

meaning Jesus uses the same word that people use when they say they love God to say that we are to also love our enemies.

We may not think that we have enemies… maybe you have rivals

I would have called Brad an enemy

but there are people you do not like

and maybe for a good reason… but as a follower of Jesus, even when we do not like it, we are called to love them

We went to rival schools…

this was two schools that seemed to always play each other on the last game of the year and the loser went home

Our senior year we hated each other and everyone knew it

Why didn’t we like each other

we both loved sports and played a lot of them

from the time we were little, we played against each other

except one year when we played on an all star baseball team together

we were both catchers and they would make us trade on and off

we hated it because if the other was playing we were sitting

we always played the same positions

In football I played tight end and defensive end he did the same

in basketball, we both played inside and would bang each other around the whole game

Our senior year… football it comes to a climax.

winner goes on, loser goes to the state playoffs and it was a very close game!

we scored late and then got a defensive stop all we had to do was run out the clock and we had them beat

I was a bit of a trash talker when I was younger

So I would walk up to the line, look at Brad and tell him, don’t let us get a first down or the game is over

We got the first down… I walk up to the line and say, “So are you going to come watch us play next week?”

He grabbed my face mask and attempted to kick me between the legs

15 yard penalty, personal foul, Brad Lincoln was ejected from his final high school football game with a little over a minute to play.

Brad and I would later work together… see each other at different things like my wife’s class reunions

we would laugh about how stupid we were