Love Your Enemy

Teaching Goal:  Treat everyone as one of God’s children.

Scriptures:

Luke 6:27-32 Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.

Matthew 25:40 I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me {Jesus}.

Materials:

• Print out “Stick Figure” (front) and Jesus (back) on both sides of one piece of paper (or draw your own pictures).  *Pictures of “Stick Figure” and Jesus can be found on pages 3 and 4 of the downloadable PDF.
• Darts and Dartboard (If you do not have darts you may team up with another family that has one and do this activity together OR great creative with another tactic)

1. Play theme song
2. Pray
3. Review last lesson
4. Lesson and Discussion

• Words written in bold are when the leader is speaking. Feel free to use your own words.

ACTIVITY: Place the picture of a generic person on the dartboard. DO NOT LET PARTICIPANTS SEE THE IMAGE OF JESUS ON THE BACK. I want you to think of someone who you fight with on a regular basis or someone whom you do not like. A bully or a mean kid at school? Someone in the news who is hurting other people? A family member? Write the names/initials of people mentioned on the generic person image. This picture represents the difficult people in our lives. Parents, be open and share a difficult relationship.

How do we try to hurt or show our dislike for people in our lives who are hard to love or even hard to be around? As people share an answer, throw a dart at the picture. You can reuse darts until everyone is finished sharing ideas. The dart represents our actions or thoughts.

Think bad thoughts about them.                 Hope that bad things happen to them.

Avoid them.                                                    Don’t help them.

Give them mean looks.                                 Don’t talk to them.

Talk bad about them to others.                    Talk about their negative qualities.

Encourage others not to like them too.      Yell at them.

Use bad language.                                         Make up or exaggerate bad stories about them.

Read Luke 6:27-32 “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” It’s easy to love people who are lovable or love us. The challenge in following Jesus is loving people who are hard to love.

Read Matthew 25:40 “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me {Jesus}.” When we treat others badly, we are treating Jesus badly. Jesus loves everyone, Jesus died for everyone.

Take the paper image down, turn it around and let everyone see the Jesus image that has been damaged by the darts. When we treat others badly, we are treating Jesus badly. Treating others badly is sin. When we have sin in our heart, we need to ask God to forgive us and for him to help us so that we don’t hurt others because of our sin.

What could we think, say or do with the difficult people in our lives that would also be honoring to Jesus?

Pray for them.                                                           

See them as hurting people.

See them as someone for whom Jesus died.        

Smile.

Simple and kind greetings.                          

Do not spread gossip or rumors.

Memorize:

When I throw a dart

It pierces Jesus’ heart.

Close in Prayer