A friend of mine  was having a problem. As a Christian, he wanted to obey the commandment to love his neighbor as himself. He also knew that when citing this as the second of the two “great” commandments, Jesus considered the word neighbor as used in this text to refer to everyone. No one was excluded. 

But my friend—and there was a big “but” in regard to one individual in his life—wondered how he could love someone who appeared to be cruel, hateful, and inhuman. 

Here is one way of handling this kind of challenge through prayer. It might be called the building project approach. It outlines a spiritually logical reasoning structure founded on the recognition that prayer takes place in the world of thought and then leads to action. And where we begin is very important.