Romans 12:14-16 “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.” Today we continue on with our Love in Action series. In case you didn’t catch any other episodes this week let me explain. This week we are taking a look at Romans 12:9-21. In the Bible this section is titled Love in Action. I thought it would be a great idea to look at these verses in a bit more detail than we would if we took the whole section at once. Sometimes it can be easy to read through a scripture and although we like what it says, we don’t slow down long enough to put what it says into practice. My hope with the episodes this week is that we will take a close enough look at this scripture that we are able to understand what love in action means and how we can implement some of it into our lives. Even if we just took one thing away from this weeks episodes I think we would all be loving the world a little bit more than we did, or perhaps loving them in a better way. 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 3)
Romans 12:14-16 “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.”
Today we continue on with our Love in Action series. In case you didn’t catch any other episodes this week let me explain. This week we are taking a look at Romans 12:9-21. In the Bible this section is titled Love in Action. I thought it would be a great idea to look at these verses in a bit more detail than we would if we took the whole section at once. Sometimes it can be easy to read through a scripture and although we like what it says, we don’t slow down long enough to put what it says into practice. My hope with the episodes this week is that we will take a close enough look at this scripture that we are able to understand what love in action means and how we can implement some of it into our lives. Even if we just took one thing away from this weeks episodes I think we would all be loving the world a little bit more than we did, or perhaps loving them in a better way.
Today’s verse starts out with a tough word. It says, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and not curse.” This is not always easy to do. For many of us it comes more naturally to curse those who persecute us. Well, maybe we don’t want to curse them, but we certainly don’t want to bless them. We usually aren’t wishing for good things to come their way. If we want to love like Jesus loved, we need to bless those who persecute us. Remember on the cross, right before Jesus dies He said, Father forgive them, they know not what they do. If Jesus could treat those that persecuted Him with forgiveness, we can attempt to bless those who persecute us. My first thought is, what does blessing those who persecute me even look like? When someone cuts us off in traffic instead of beeping our horn, swearing at them and saying whatever other unkind things we may think of, we can say a quick blessing. Dear Lord, I ask you to bless that person today and keep them safe. When people are rude to us throughout the day, we may stop and say a quick blessing. Dear Lord, we ask you to bless that person and help them to have a better day. It can be that simple. It doesn’t have to be that you say a long drawn out prayer wishing the world for them. Just say a quick blessing instead of wishing something bad to happen, which may be our go to thought.
Next, the verse says, rejoice with those who rejoice. This can be hard, especially if we don’t feel we have anything to rejoice about. For instance, what if our friend just got a new job and they are rejoicing. According to this verse we should be rejoicing with them, but what if we have been looking too and we haven’t found a job yet? What if our friend is rejoicing because they are getting married or having a baby? We should be rejoicing with them and yet we have been praying to get married or have a baby for a long time and it hasn’t happened for us yet. Do you see how it can sometimes be hard to rejoice when others rejoice. When I first read this I didn’t understand why it would be hard to do this. Then the Holy Spirit brought to my mind all these reasons why we might struggle sometimes. Even in this instances when someone has something you want and you don’t, we should still strive to rejoice with them. Someone else getting what they prayed for doesn’t take away from your chances of getting it. That can be what we are thinking sometimes. We might think if someone gets a job that means there is one less job out there for me to get. This is not true, the perfect job for you is out there too.
Something else that just came into my mind is that we can have two competing emotions at the same time. I think it is super important that we all know that this is ok. You can be happy and rejoicing for someone else’s success and at the same time be sad for your circumstances. You can be excited for them and nervous for yourself. Sometimes it is important to give ourselves permission to be happy for someone else’s success and know that our happiness for them does not take away anything from our circumstances.
Next the verse says, “Mourn with those who mourn.” This can be difficult for the same reasons I listed above. What if you are celebrating because something great just happened in your life, it can be hard to mourn with someone else. It can also be hard to mourn with those who mourn if you don’t know the person they lost. I think one way to mourn, even when it is hard, is to put yourself in that person’s shoes. Maybe you are finding it hard to mourn with someone who got fired because you have never had that happen. That is great that it hasn’t happened to you, but you can put yourself in their shoes? Can you imagine how you might feel if it did happen to you. Maybe you know someone who is mourning the loss of a loved one. Could you put yourself in their shoes and imagine what life would be like if you lost your mom, dad, sibling, spouse or friend? Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is a great way to connect with others. You may not be going through what they are going through but when you take the time to think about what it would be like for you if you were, you gain a whole new perspective as well as a greater level of understanding and compassion.
The verse ends by saying, “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.” Our country does not seem to be doing a great job of living in harmony with one another. There is so much division in this country today. I think if we were to love in all the ways we have talked about earlier in this episode and the last two episodes, then we might be able to live in better harmony with one another. A big part of living in harmony with one another is addressed in the very next line. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low positions. A lot of the division is caused by people thinking they are better than someone else. When we think we are better than someone else and we think we know more than they do, then we don’t really listen to what they have to say. We don’t take their opinion into account or listen to their side of things because they can’t possibly know what they are talking about.
Politicians tend not to listen to the very people that elected them. Once they get into their office they tend to forget who got them into that position. Associating with people of a low position can be hard sometimes, just as associating with people of a high position can be hard. We tend to like familiarity. We tend to stick to people whom are like us. We understand them and we relate well to them. However, God is calling us to higher relationships. If we want to love like Jesus did, we need to love everyone, not just those at the same station in life as we are, not just those we feel comfortable around, everyone.
Do not be conceited is also a struggle these days. We live in a “look at me” culture where people post photos of themselves on social media all the time. Social media was first started to keep people connected. It was a way of staying in touch with a lot of people at one time. Instead of having to write individual letters/emails to all your friends, you could make one post and every one of your friends could see it. It is a great concept. However, today a lot of people use it as a platform to say, “Look how awesome I am doing or I am.” This can make it hard not to be conceited when we are spending all of our time only posting about how great we are and all the amazing things that are going on in our lives.
If we want to love like Jesus did, we need to make the effort to do what Jesus did and think like Jesus thought. Jesus never promised us that following Him would be easy. Yes, many things we talked about today, and in the other episodes this week, might not come naturally to us, and that is ok. Just because it doesn’t come naturally and just because it won’t be easy, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. We can do hard things. The Bible says in Philippians 4:14, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” God will help us do these things, we just have to want to do them, try to do them and God will do the rest. He will give us the strength and perseverance we need to do them. Also, we don’t have to change everything all at once. What if you just picked one thing out of this episode that you could start doing? What if you just decided to rejoice when others rejoice from now on, no matter how you were feeling? What if you decided you were going to bless those that persecute you from now on? Whatever it is you think you could try to start doing, or stop doing if it was a negative thing.
God doesn’t expect perfection from us. He is just looking for us to try. He is looking for us to want to grow closer to Him. He is looking for our effort. What is one step you can take today to love a little more like Jesus loved? What is one thing you can do to put love into action? Will you do that one thing today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we want to love like you love, please help us. Help us to rejoice when others rejoice and mourn when they mourn. Help us to let go of pride, that is not easy for us Lord. We will need some of your supernatural help to get rid of our pride. Help us to not be conceited, help us to think of others more than we think of ourselves. And probably the hardest thing you are calling us to today is to bless those who persecute us. Oh Lord, we are definitely going to need your help with that one. Please show us how to do this. When we are in a circumstance where someone is persecuting us, please put on our heart the correct words to say, the correct feelings to have, whatever else we might need in the moment. We love you Lord and we are so grateful you answer our prayers. We are grateful for all the strength, wisdom and knowledge you provide us on a daily basis. You are so amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day.