Why God Asks You To Pray For Your Enemies
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
— Luke 6:27–28 (NIV)
Every morning, I start my day in prayer, asking God to show me my heart and where my focus needs to be. When the Lord laid this request on my heart, I had to stop and think — Ooh, the Lord seems to be doing something with all these heavy asks. But here we go. I’ll follow the call and talk about why God asks you to pray for your enemies.
Let me start off by saying: I’m probably the last person who should be talking about praying for my enemies — because for a long time, my prayers sounded a lot more like curses.
I prayed that God would curse everyone involved in covering up the abuse I tried to speak out against. I prayed that those who kept the abuse secret would be blessed with a sore curse and have sorrow upon their heads.
Sounds harsh, right?
But what if I told you I chose to speak out against abuse — abuse of children I personally knew — and because of that, I lost everything? I was even threatened with arrest for criminal mischief. I lost my home, my career, my family, and my support systems — all for speaking the truth.
Would you still think my prayer was harsh?
When Justice Is All You Can See
For a long time, I felt justified in those prayers.
And honestly, I still hope the justice of God falls upon them — but now, in a different way.
You might be asking what led to this change of heart. Here's the thing: it’s a story about a guy who tried to run from God, a mighty storm, and a big fish.
Did you guess the story? If you said Jonah and the Whale, you’d be correct!
Go ahead, pause for a second and give yourself a little pat on the back.
Jonah and the Problem with Mercy
Jonah was a prophet of God, and one day, God gave him a very clear assignment:
“Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:2)
Now, Nineveh wasn’t just some random city. It was the capital of Assyria — a cruel and violent empire known for destroying Jonah’s people. So imagine being told to go preach to your enemies and give them a chance to repent so they won’t be destroyed. Jonah wasn’t interested in that kind of mercy. Not one bit.
Instead of obeying, Jonah thought, Mmm, nope — and ran. He got on a ship heading in the opposite direction — to Tarshish. That would be like God calling you to go to New York, and you buy a plane ticket to Tokyo.
While Jonah was on the ship, God sent a violent storm that threatened to break the boat apart. The sailors panicked and started praying to their gods — and just to clarify, these weren’t Yahweh, the Most High God, but their little “g” gods. Meanwhile, Jonah was asleep below deck.
The captain woke him up and demanded that he pray to his God. The sailors cast lots to see who was to blame for the storm, and the lot fell on Jonah. He admitted he was running from God and told them the only way to calm the storm was to throw him into the sea.
At first, the sailors tried rowing harder to get back to shore — but the storm only got worse. So reluctantly, they tossed Jonah overboard, and immediately the sea became calm.
That’s when God sent a great fish (not called a whale in the text, but a “great fish”) to swallow Jonah. He spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. While he was in that dark, smelly place, Jonah prayed. It was a raw, honest prayer of repentance and surrender. He thanked God for saving him from drowning and promised to fulfill his vows.
God heard him, and the fish vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Then God spoke again:
“Go to Nineveh and proclaim the message I give you.” (Jonah 3:2)
Mercy for Those We’d Rather Not Forgive
This time, Jonah obeyed. He went to Nineveh and gave the simplest, shortest sermon ever — again, because Jonah didn’t want to give the people of Nineveh an opportunity to repent and change their ways.
All Jonah said was:
“Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
To his surprise, the people actually listened. They fasted, repented, and even the king humbled himself in sackcloth and ashes.
And y’all… even the cows repented.
I’m not even joking. The king said:
“Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth…” (Jonah 3:7-8)
Can you imagine cows walking around in burlap robes, mooing their confessions? That’s how serious Nineveh got about turning their hearts around.
God saw their genuine change and had mercy — He did not destroy them.
When Mercy Feels Unfair
You’d think Jonah would be thrilled that his message worked. But no — he was angry. Furious that God showed mercy to people he felt didn’t deserve it.
Sound familiar?
Jonah even said:
“I knew You were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love… That’s why I ran away in the first place!” (Jonah 4:2, paraphrased)
Jonah went outside the city and sulked, waiting to see if maybe God would still wipe them out. God caused a plant to grow and give Jonah shade, which made him feel better. But the next day, God sent a worm to destroy the plant and a scorching wind to make Jonah miserable.
Jonah got even more angry. And God used that moment to teach him:
“You’re upset about a plant you didn’t even grow, but you don’t care about a city full of people who don’t know their right hand from their left?”
That’s how the story ends — with a question.
Because the story isn’t just about Jonah. It’s about us. It’s about how we respond when God asks us to love people we’d rather see punished.
When God Asks You to Pray for the Irredeemable
After I heard Jonah’s story from this point of view, I had to stop and reflect on my own. If God was willing to give the people of Nineveh the right to repentance and a chance to know who God truly was… didn’t He want the same for my enemies?
That’s when I was reminded of Saul — later known as Paul.
Sometimes, the people God asks us to pray for can look irredeemable — because their hearts seem so far gone from the truth. God may be asking you to pray for someone who is even actively trying to harm others — socially, politically, professionally — for standing up and speaking truth.
But what I’ve come to see is this:
God can fix the unfixable. He can redeem the irredeemable.
Praying for someone like Paul — or the people of Nineveh — doesn’t make sense in the natural. They looked too far gone. Too hardened. Too deep in sin.
But prayer isn’t about what we can see.
It’s about trusting that God’s mercy runs deeper than the pit someone’s fallen into.
What I Really Want for My Enemies
As I looked at praying for my enemies — the ones who completely destroyed my life — I started to reflect on what I truly wanted.
I wanted the abusers and those who helped cover the abuse to be held accountable.
I wanted the children's voices, the ones who had been silenced, to be rescued.
I wanted the abusers to come to a realization of their sin, to cry out to their Maker for rescue — so the darkness could finally stop.
I wanted justice to roll out from God and redeem the story, the shame, the grief, and the darkness surrounding this abuse.
So when God asked me again to pray for my enemies, I was finally ready to pray a prayer of pleading for forgiveness and redemption on their behalf — rather than prayers cursing them.
What It Means to “Bless” Our Enemies
I was reminded of something Joyce Meyer once said about praying for our enemies.
She said something like this:
When we ask God to bless our enemies, we’re not praying for their worldly success.
We’re not asking God to make them rich or help them climb the corporate ladder.
We’re asking God to intervene in their lives so they can be brought to truth — so their hearts can be softened, and they can turn from their wicked ways and receive Jesus into their hearts.
That’s what I pray for now:
That everyone in this story of abuse would be blessed with truth, with softened hearts, and that God’s justice would roll out — not just to punish, but to save.
The Story Isn’t Finished
I wish I could wrap this post with a pretty little bow — something that says my enemies got justice and the children’s voices were finally heard and believed.
But God’s not done with my story yet.
And He’s not done with yours either.
If God is asking you to pray for your enemies, it’s not because He wants you to pray for their worldly success.
It’s because He wants you to pray for their souls — so they can be saved.
Living in darkness is completely heartbreaking. And if we believe in redemption, if we believe we are not too far gone, then we must believe our enemies aren’t either.
Because every soul matters to God.
Even the ones who hurt you.
Even the ones who silenced you.
Even the ones who went up trying to destroy your life to cover up their sins.
God sees and He is not done.
He is not done in their story.
And He is not done in yours.
We can believe in a God who saves not only us and our stories but also saves our enemies and their stories too.
