"Hate Them"

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26

If you are around my three year old granddaughter for very long you will soon discover how much she loves her daddy and her mama. Everything centers around them. She and I were talking yesterday about how much Jesus loves her. She said she loves her daddy, and I told her Jesus loves her. Then she told me, "I don't love Jesus any more, I love my daddy". She is having a hard time in her little mind with the concept of loving Jesus and her parents. So I keep telling her that she can still love her daddy and mama and Jesus at the same time.

In her three year old understanding my granddaughter thinks she has to choose between loving Jesus or loving her parents. The more I think about it, in a "spiritual" sense, she is not far from the truth. The Lord doesn't want us to literally "hate" our parents, spouses, children or siblings. We are to love them and be thankful for them. And He wants us to have good relationships with those around us, especially our families. But we must choose which one we love the most. If we love those we have human relationships with more than we love Him, we are not worthy to be his disciples.

The word for "hate" in this verse doesn't mean the same thing we usually think of when we think of the word hate. The only thing we are to hate is sin/evil- we are even commanded to love our enemies, not hate them. What Jesus was saying in the verse above was you must "hate" these if you are going to be His disciple- His follower. Here it means that we cannot serve them both. We cannot have two masters. We cannot "follow" them- their agenda and plan for our lives. We must follow the direction in which He is leading us. And we cannot prefer these relationships over our relationship with Him.

Have a great day. Love those that the Lord has placed in your life, just don't love them more than you love Him.

For further reading:
Matthew 5:44; 6:24
Amos 5:15
Psalm 97:10
Proverbs 8:13

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Coffee Break is a morning devotional written by Lorraine Ezell
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