Romans 12:9-11 “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” Today's episode and the rest of the episodes for this week are going to look at Romans 12 the subsection Love in Action. We are going to take a closer look at these actions and how we can use them to show our loved ones more love. Also, how we can learn to love more perfectly. Our goal is to love like Jesus loves. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Love in Action (Part 1)
Romans 12:9-11 “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”
When I was looking through various scriptures for the episode I found this subtitle in Romans 12, Love in Action, and instantly knew I wanted to talk on it. I think love is a complicated thing. There are so many different kinds of love and also so many different interpretations of love. If you asked 100 different people what love is, I bet you would get 100 different answers. On top of all of that, we have all had different experiences with love. Some of us were shown a lot of love growing up and some of us weren’t. Some of us were used in the name of love, some of us were abused in the name of love. Some of us had parents who didn’t know how to love. Some of us didn’t have parents. Do you see what I mean about how love is complicated? What I loved about this subtitle is that if we think of love as an action, we can define it a little more easily. I also love that the Bible defines it for us, so we don’t have to come up with a definition. I love that because if we had to come up with a definition it would probably be tainted by our experiences. God’s love is pure and that is the love we want. Yet, we can’t strive for something if we don’t know how to get it.
In this section of the Bible, love is broken down into actions. I will spend the next few episodes going over these actions and looking at them a little closer and hopefully by the end of this week we will all understand love a little better. This verse starts by saying love must be sincere. I think we have all felt the difference between sincere love and insincere love. When someone one is insincere with their love you can usually tell. They may be saying they love you with their words, and yet their actions are saying something completely different. For instance, they say they love you and they want to spend time with you, but then they never do. They say you mean everything to them and yet they put you last. These are a few examples of how you might feel if someone wasn’t sincere with their love.
Next the verse says, Hate what is evil and cling to what is good. You would think this one would be obvious and easy. Of course we would hate what is evil. Who would choose to cling to what is evil over what is good? And yet we do it all the time. It is difficult in this world to know what is evil sometimes. The world seems to normalize so much that is not good. A great example of this is pornography. This is ruining people’s marriage. I have a friend who’s husband was addicted to it and would not stop. It ruined their marriage. He had a wife, he could have clung to his marriage and yet he clung to what was evil instead. Unfortunately this is becoming more and more of a problem. There are lots of ways in which we allow things to creep into our marriages and ruin them. We want to cling to what is good and yet we get so turned around sometimes with what is good and what isn’t. Even with our prayer time. We know prayer is good. We want to spend time in prayer and grow closer to God and yet we allow so many other things that aren’t good to take the place of prayer. Lord, please help us to hate what is evil and cling to what is good.
Next it says, “Be devoted to one another in love.” Being devoted to one another is something we seem to struggle with. I think the divorce rate today is above 50%. I think if we could master being devoted to one another in love, we could change this. When I looked up the word devoted it said, “very loving or loyal.” Imagine if we were loyal to one another in love? How would your relationships change if you were loyal in love? When looking up the definition for loyal it said, “giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institution.” Think about your relationships, how would they be different if you showed more firm and constant support to your loved one? I know mine would improve. I can’t think of a single relationship that wouldn’t improve with a little more support. I think our loved ones just want to know that we are on their side and we have got their back.
The verse goes on to say, “Honor one another above yourselves.” This is something I see less and less today. We seem to live in a society that looks out for themselves first and others second. I don’t mind helping others as long as it doesn’t inconvenience me. Putting others first can be hard. We want to make sure our own needs are taking care of and that is not a bad thing. However, we often have excess and yet we hold onto it afraid we won’t have enough. I am not saying we shouldn’t save for a rainy day, saving is good. However, when you have way more than you need and yet you still aren’t giving to those in need because you are afraid you won’t have enough, that is not a good thing. Trust in the Lord, that he will provide for you when you need it. Also, take some time and think of how you could honor those around you.
Lastly it says, “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” This can be hard sometimes. We can certainly lose our zeal and spiritual fervor if we are not paying attention. If we are not serving the Lord on a regular basis, it can be easy to lose our zeal. If we are not keeping up with our prayer time and we are not checking in with God on a regular basis, then we can start to forget how amazing He is. We can start to forget all of His promises and all that He has done for us. We can also lose our zeal or spiritual fervor if we do the same thing day in and day out. We can start to do things out of routine without even putting much thought into it and then these things can become boring to us. If this happens, it is ok, it is normal. Don’t keep doing those same things though, switch it up. If you are getting bored with how you are interacting with God, do something different. Say different prayers, maybe journal instead of talking with God. Maybe take a break from what you normally do and try something new. God doesn’t really care HOW we spend time with Him, He just cares IF we spend time with Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to hear all ways we can put love into action. Help us to hear in this episode which ways we need to work on and then show us how to work on it. Lord, we want to love like you love, please show us how. We want our love to be sincere. We want to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. We want to be devoted to one another in love. We want to honor one another above ourselves. Lord, we just don’t know how, please show us. Father, we want to never be lacking in zeal, but keep our spiritual fervor, serving you. Please teach us, Dad. We are willing to learn and we are giving you permission to come into our lives and teach us. We need you Lord! You love so freely and so perfectly. We want to love like that too! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me in this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!