January 20, 2011

"Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good. Love each other deeply. Honor others more than yourselves." Romans 12:9-10

"Love each other deeply" says the Scripture. The word that is used is the word for "brotherly love". Within the fellowship of the church you are to love others like family. The "phileo" type of love is the highest measure of love which human beings are capable of sharing. It refers to a genuine warm emotional feeling of fondness and familiarity. In other words, when you love a fellow Christian give it all you've got. Don't hold back.

Why should you not love your fellow believers like you love family? Afterall, you have the same Father. If you love God you certainly should love those in your church fellowship who also love God. You love them because God, your Father loves them. You love them deeply because they are spiritual family.

And why should you not love your fellow believers who not only share you Father, but also share your faith. Faith is a powerful force in the life of a believer. Faith is a set of beliefs about Who God is, how He operates, how He loves you and what He wants you to do and to become. A common system of beliefs and values can form a strong bond for friendship and fellowship among believers in a local church. Sharing strong beliefs at the core of your being with other believers is a strong uniting factor.

Also, when you worship and work together within the fellowship of a church you share the same focus. You want that fellowship to prosper and grow. The people and the pastors and the ministries of that church has inspired you and instructed you and invested in you over the years and it has become an important part of your life. Because you value that you value others who share your passion for the the health of that church. You are a team, you are members of the body who are working together to achieve shared goals. That is a strong common bond.

Love one another deeply as you would a brother or a sister. Live in unity and harmony with them. Share spiritual community as you worship together , serve each other and reach out to the needs in your city.

Having the same Father, the same faith and an indentical focus are important factors in loving each other deeply (like brothers or sisters) within a local church fellowship. It is a powerful bond! It will bless you in your spirit and build you in your spiritual development!

Do you have a brotherly love for those who worship with you? If not, why not?

January 19, 2011

"Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good. Love each other deeply. Honor others more than yourselves." Romans 12:9-10

Who doesn't want true love? Who wouldn't benefit from it? What church couldn't use more of it?

True love is hard to find. Maybe that is because it is hard to do.

In these two verses Paul gives us perhaps the most concise description of true love found anywhere - even more concise than I Corinthians 13.

Life is all about relationships and therefore, love is essential. God wired you to thrive within loving relationships but sin infected your nature with selfishness and selfishness is the great "anti-love".

So, the reason why it's hard for you to love others is because you love yourself more. Until you want to love more than be loved you will struggle with true love. Wow, that's honest!

Perhaps that's why this verse describing true love begins by demanding honesty. Until you are honest about your lack of love how can you ever hope to honestly love?

Selfish love is manipulative. It always look for an edge or an angle to get what it wants. When you are angling for what YOU want you will not be interested in what others want. Self-love is the "anti-love". Insincere love uses people rather than serves them. When others feel used by you not only do they not feel loved by you, it is demeaning to them. No one wants to feel like an object.

How do you get over the self-love so you can love others with a sincere love?

Back to the honesty! True love begins with repenting to God for your self-love. Call it what it is - SIN. The root of all sin is selfishness and that must be dug out by the root! Only the God of perfect love can do that.

The antidote for self-love is God's love. Maybe that is why Jesus commanded us to "Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself". Until you love God more that you love yourself it will be impossible to love others and not try to manipulate them. Actually, you will try to manipulate God, too!

Get over it! Root out SIN and get sincere!

January 18, 2011

"Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good. Love each other deeply. Honor others more than yourselves." Romans 12:9-10

Mature love is pure love. It is the love God has for you as revealed in His Son, Jesus. It is pure love because it comes from pure motives.

Mature love is honest. It has nothing to hide and no hidden motive or agenda. Honest love seeks the best for others and gives its best to others. It acts on the truth and speaks the truth and deals truthfully with those it loves.

Mature love is humble. It puts the needs and interests of others ahead of its own. There is no pretense or need to impress. It is not concerned about maintaining an image or protecting an ego. It is not afraid to risk in order to make others feel loved.

Mature love hates hurtful things and therefore doesn't hurt others. It opposes evil things and stays clear of evil itself. Evil is the anti-love because it promotes selfishness.

Mature love is helpful. It embraces the things that are good and helpful for others. It looks for the things that are good and helpful in others. It encourages and serves to bring out the best in others.

Mature love honors others by honoring God and obeying His Word.

Mature love is pure love because it comes out of pure motives and expresses itself in ways worthy of God's love. This is the love you receive from God and the love He expects you to share with others. And this is the love that fosters unity and community within the Body of Christ.

January 17, 2011

"Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good. Love each other deeply. Honor others more than yourselves." Romans 12:9-10

Everyone wants love. Everyone needs love. Very few know how to give it. Many have trouble receiving it.

Tucked into the center of this incredible chapter about finding our purpose is this admonition to learn how to love. Could it be that love is at the heart of our purpose?

Uh..........yes!

Once the ego, and the evil and the emotions have been surrendered, and once the mind has had a supernatural transformation (by the way, the word for "transformation" is the root word for "metamorphosis" - which is what happens when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly). What happens in your heart and mind is no less miraculous than that!

When you have removed the obstacles to loving God and of recieving His love, you have positioned yourself to think and act in loving ways. One expression of that is serving in the Body using your spiritual gift.

So, the result of heeding these admonitions will be unity and community in the Body. As hard as it is to get there, how in the world do you maintain it?

Unity and community are preserved by maturity. Mature love will keep the Body healthy and growing.

What is mature love? What does it look like? What are the characteristics that mark this love? That will be the theme of our posts this week.

Mature love is sincere. Sincere means "real", not "phony", not "faked". The origins of the word "sincere" comes from two words meaning "without wax". Interesting, eh? It comes from a practice common to unscrupulous potters when they sold their wares in the market. Occasionally as the pots were being fired in the kiln, a few of them would crack. You have known enough crackpots in your lifetime to know that doesn't work. But rather than take the loss on the pots that had cracked the dishonest potter would melt wax and seal over the cracks and paint the pottery to hide their deception. Then they would sell the defective pots at full price. Only when that pot sat in the sun and the wax melted did the buyer realize he had been swindled. So, to protect their own business and reputation, honest potters would put up a sign at their booth that said "Sine Cere" - "without wax".

Mature love does not try to cover the cracks in its life nor does it reject others for the imperfections they have. As Peter admonishes, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." I Peter 4:8 Mature love lets the love of God seep through the cracks of their life and into the cracks of others!

Do you love with a mature love? Do you know someone who loves you like that?

January 16, 2011

"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully." Romans 12:3-8

A missionary on furlough told this true story while visiting his home church in Michigan, "While serving at a small field hospital in Africa, every two weeks I traveled by bicycle through the jungle to a nearby city for supplies. It was a journey of two days and required camping overnight at the halfway point. On one of these journeys, I arrived in the city where I planned to collect money from a bank, purchase medicine and supplies, and begin my two-day journey back to the hospital. Upon arriving at the city, two men were fighting, and one was seriously injured. I treated his injuries and told him about Jesus Christ. I then traveled two days, camped overnight, and arrived back home without incident.

Two weeks later I repeated my journey. When I arrived back at the city I was approached by the young man whom I had treated. He told me he knew I carried money and medicines. He said "Some friends and I followed you into the jungle, knowing you would camp overnight. We planned to kill you and take your money and drugs. But just as we were about to jump your camp, we saw that you were surrounded by 26 armed guards!"At this I laughed and said that I certainly was all alone out in that jungle campsite. But the young man pressed the point, saying, "No Sir, I was not the only person to see the guards. My five friends also saw them, and we all counted them. It was because of those 26 armed guards that we were afraid and left you alone."

At this point in his message, a man in the audience jumped to his feet and interrupted the missionary and asked the exact day that incident happened. The missionary told him - and the man excitedly told THIS story - "On the night of your incident in Africa, it was morning here, and I was preparing to play golf. I was about to tee off when I felt the urge to pray for you. In fact, the urging of the Holy Spirit was SO STRONG, I called men to meet me here to pray for you. "If you were here with me that day to pray please stand up?" The men who met together to pray stood up. The missionary wasn’t really concerned with who they were - but he wept as he counted their number -You guessed it - there were 26!

In these verses of Romans 12, Paul urges the believers with the importance of knowing the part they are to play in the local church AND to make sure they play that part. The part you should play is determined by the spiritual gift you have been given. Discover it and then faithfully use it by serving in the church.

Those 26 men in Michigan who had the gift of intercession were faithful to play their parts and they saved the life of their missionary friend!

How do you discover your spiritual gift?

Experiment

One way is to volunteer for a variety of areas in your church where you can serve discover what you enjoy doing and what you don't. You can also find out where you are effective and where you aren't.

Experience

Look back over your weeks and months or years of serving God in the church and see where you have made a difference. Talk with your pastor and see what he thinks your gifts might be. Where you have seen spiritual fruit develop from your ministry is a good indication of your giftedness.

Enlist

Ask your pastor if he has a spiritual gift inventory that you can take to help you identify your gift(s). At FredWes, that is part of our membership training class. Everyone who joins our church as a member know what his gifts are and can enlist in ministry according to their giftedness.

God has given you a "measure of faith" - a special gift enabling you to serve Him by serving your brothers and sisters in the church. If He has given you a gift, shouldn't you unwrap it? Shouldn't you do your part?

January 15, 2011

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship." Romans 12:1

I don't understand it but the rage these days among young people is the "Twilight" series that deals with vampires. Maybe it is my age or my lack of "hipness" but I don't get the attraction to evil, blood-sucking, undead people. If you are "hip" help me out with that one.

In my day the "undead" people of choice were zombies. They weren't nearly as scary or lethal as the vampires. Zombies just walk stiff-legged with their arms extended in front of them while making grunting noises. Vampires, on the other hand can turn into bats and go airborne on you! I hate when that happens!

Apparently part of the fear of these "walking dead" is that you can't kill them. There is always one idiot in each movie who empties a gun into the zombie and then after he has run out of ammo and just before the monster gets him, he throws the gun at the monster. It is the last stupid thing he ever does.

Why am I talking about this?

Because it conjurs up the concept of a "living sacrifice" as an undead person or a dead person walking. In a sense, that is what God calls us to do - declare ourselves dead to our sinful self and alive to Christ. By faith, you lay yourself on God's altar and die to your ambitions and your agenda.

In the Old Testament, a sacrifice was an essential part of the worship. The worshipper brought a lamb or an oxen or a dove to the priest and the altar and the priest killed it, laid it upon the altar and burned it. That sacrifice was dead! It was not getting off the altar. So, the image of a living sacrifice is like an oxymoron to the Jewish mind.

That IS the challenge of being a living sacrifice, once you offer yourself on the altar of surrender, you must stay there! You are not to take back your gift and use it as you wish. That means you must continually die! Unlike the OT sacrifice this in NOT a once and for all offering. Each day or more likely, multiple times during the day, you continually lay down your will on the altar of obedience.

As long as you leave your sacrifice on the altar, God promises to do some incredibly important things. He promises to "transform you by the renewing of you mind". While you place yourself on the altar as a selfish sinful person, once you do, God does a supernatural work in you! Dying to self allows you to come alive to Him! That is "good, and perfect and pleasing" to God!

Vampire? No thanks!

Zombie? Nope!

Living sacrifice? That's what I'm talking about!

January 14, 2011

"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you." Romans 12:3

Have you discovered the delicate balance between having to high of an opinion of yourself and thinking that God cannot use you at all? That "sober" evaluation of who you are in Christ AND of Who He can be in you is what leads to fruitfulness and fulfillment as a Christian! Therefore, one of the hardest accomplishments in life is to arrive at an objective view of yourself and your abilities. Perhaps the harder thing is maintaining it once you get it. To do so requires a delicate balance between pride and humility - OR - between arrogance and false humility.

But Paul gives some insights on how to find that balance. He says the key is to measure yourself against your potential in Christ rather than compare yourself to other Christians. That will largely be determined by the extent that you know Christ and understand yourself. He has already challenged you to have your heart changed and your mind transformed by His Spirit. Only when you have the mind of Christ can you "soberly judge" yourself. Only when you know what your spiritual gift(s) is (are) can you be honest in your view of yourself.

I completely surrendered to the will of God when I was 14 years old. But at that time I had a very poor self-image and very little self-confidence. So, when God called me into the ministry I struggled gathering enough confidence to see myself in a pastoral role. It took me four years to grow and mature into the understanding of self-confidence based on God confidence. A trusted spiritual mentor constantly reminded me that with God's calling comes His enablement. And I came to understand the truth about spiritual gifts, special abilities given by God and activated by His Holy Spirit that enable me to minister in His Name. I could partner with God to accomplish the calling He had placed on my life. I began to understand that "without God I could nothing" BUT I could "do all things through Christ Who gives me strength". I could identify with Paul when he said, "To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" Col. 1:27.

I learned during those formative years that self-confidence for the Christian is "Christ confidence". Having confidence was not about me, it was about Who He was and Who He could be in me if I would surrender to Him and live a consecrated life walking with Him. God would not be able to use me if I thought too highly of my abilities. Neither could He use me if I lacked confidence. The answer was to find my confidence in Him and His ability to use me in ministry.

Later, I learned about "spiritual gifts" or "the measure of faith" that God has given to every believer. Once I took my ego out of the equation, once I stopped measuring myself compared to other people and, instead, measured myself based on who I was in Christ - AND, who He was in me that's the day I was able to believe that God could use me in ministry! I believe that is what the phrase "sober judgment" means.

How about you? Have you discovered your spiritual gift? And if you have, are you using it in your local church.

If you answer "no" to either of these questions it is time to "sober up"!