Blessing Enemies
Two years ago local government officials attempted, unsuccessfully, to evict 5 new Christian families from their village. The Christians’ study of the book of James during that time helped them deal with their persecution.

One of the Christian leaders from this village recently gave testimony that not one person has fallen away from Christ, in spite of many difficulties over the past 2 years. In fact the number of believers has now grown to 12 families.

This Christian leader took out of his shoulder bag 12 eviction notices that had been put in the door of every believer at pre-dawn just a few days before. Each of these letters said, “The farm land of ___(a Christian family’s name), who is a Christian, has henceforth been divided up and given to __________ and  ________(non-Christian families in the village).”

The morning these notices were delivered there was a demonstration of the villagers against the Christians. People were waving machetes around and shouting; “Now we are going out to claim our new farmland. Who is going to try to do anything about it!” The Christians stayed quietly in their homes so that there would not be any trouble.

When this Christian leader was asked what they were going to do he said, “We are going to go on as if nothing happened. We will continue to farm our land and not be intimidated. We have these notes as evidence and we know who wrote them. If one of us gets hurt we will go to the government in the capital city because what these people are trying to do is illegal. We know who the ringleaders of the group are and we are watching them and their families. Sooner or later one of them will have a need. For example, if one of their old mother’s house is leaking, all of us Christians are going to show up at her house with roofing grass and fix it. We are praying for opportunities to bless them. This is what Christ taught us to do, ‘Return blessing for cursing. Do good to those who do evil to you. Overcome evil with good’”.

Wow!

Bless these enemies along with these Christians that the whole village may be God’s village!