week 3 deep love diving challenges

(If you're planning on joining me for this week's challenges, I'd love to know...and to hear about your ideas and experience for loving God with all your mind and loving your enemy.)  

My focus on loving God this week is to try and understand and carry out what it means to love Him with all of my mind. If you'd like to join me in this mind-loving-God journey, here are this week's challenges (some of these can happen over the course of several days or be repeated):

• Meditate, pray about, think on what it means to love God with all of our mind
• Study His Word
• Choose at least one new Scripture to memorize
• Practice thinking on things which are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.
• Practice being still in my mind as well as my surroundings. 

My focus on loving others this week is to love my enemy. You know, the people who challenge me, give me nervous knots of fear when I see them. The people I'd rather avoid meeting altogether. People I have little regard for. I've almost broken out into a cold sweat several times just anticipating this week. If you'd like to join me in loving your enemy this week, here are this week's challenges:

• Start here: Ask God to bring to mind the people you consider enemies. Some of these you might know immediately. Others might take some soul searching in partnership with God.
• Send a card to your enemy to lift their spirits.
• Refrain from judging others.
• Share a meal with your enemy (Jesus did).
• If you're following US politics, find at least three good things to say about the other candidate. You know, the one you'd never vote for in a thousand years. Be authentic and look deep. Saying you like their hair because it is black or their eyes because they have two of them does not count.    
• Learn about another group of people (religious, cultural, nationality) and appreciate their background
• Pray for your enemy. Prayers like "Please God take them out of my life. Please let me never see them again. Smite them with fire and brimstone" do not count. Ask God to guide you in how to lovingly pray for them.
• Do a love stretch: The above are stretchy enough. However, if you really want to stretch, aim to accomplish all within the next couple of weeks.

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