Rabbi Schneider - Truth to Live By
Shalom beloved one, God bless you. I wanna focus today on the Book of Luke, chapter 23 verse 34. A scripture that many of us are familiar with but I just wanna reemphasize it to help us remember this as we move through life. Yeshua's on the cross, being crucified for the sin of the world, there's people on the ground as He's high lifted up on the cross, they're mocking Him, laughing at Him, and Jesus as He's about to give His last breath before passing way, Yeshua says this out loud. Praying to the Father, He says "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do".
To me that is so helpful in realizing that when people do the things that they do that oftentimes hurt us, that are destructive, that are full of wicked and evil energy, the people that are doing those things, they don't even understand why they're doing what they're doing. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they do". In other words the people that are committing evil are not rooted in the truth. They're not rooted in the love of God. They're not whole. And so they're living on a surface level, connected to the powers of darkness. Usually they're hurt people that are hurting others, people that are very broken and messed up and as a result of their brokenness, and as a result of their woundedness, as a result of them being victims, they now victimize other people.
So if we can sometimes get underneath people's behaviors that are offending us to try to gain insight like Yeshua had as to why they are doing what they're doing, in other words, why did that person say that offensive thing to me? A lot of times they said it because they were afraid and insecure. But we don't hear the insecurity at face value. We don't hear the fear at face value. We don't see the inferiority complex that they have at face value. All we hear is them insulting us.
So let's just pray that Father would help us to see beneath the offense to understand who these people that hurt us really are, and when we know who they really are and why they're doing what they're doing, that it's a result of their own brokenness and their own hurt and their own woundedness, we'll be able to have compassion for them, just as Yeshua had compassion for those that were crucifying Him when He said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do".
So Father we ask you right now for a spirit of wisdom and revelation to be able to see through the surface, to penetrate the realms of darkness, to be able to see people for how they are standing before You that we can love them and have compassion on them, in Jesus' name.