Let Love be Genuine..Craig Denison Ministries

 Let Love be Genuine

Craig Denison Ministries

Weekly Overview

This week we’re going to take a look at seven principles found in Romans 12 that describe the marks of a true Christian. The intent of studying this passage is not to condemn or lead you to comparison. Instead, let Paul’s teaching fill you with a deep, transformative longing to wholeheartedly pursue the life God intends for you. Ask God to help you see yourself as he sees you, to see the grace he’s placed upon your life by the blood of Jesus so that you might walk more fully in the power and anointing of the Spirit. Open your heart to God, and let him do a mighty work in you. He is near to you, ready to mold and shape you into a disciple filled with and fueled by his incredible love. May you discover God’s grace and perspective this week as you examine your life in light of this powerful passage of Scripture.

Scripture:“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” Romans 12:9-10

Devotional:

Paul begins his description of what it looks like to be a true disciple of Christ in Romans 12 with a foundational phrase for this passage: “Let love be genuine.” Genuine love is one of the most powerful forces in all of creation. Genuine love drove Jesus through his life, death, and resurrection. Genuine love started the advance of the gospel, leading to the salvation of billions. The world tirelessly searches for genuine love. And it is genuine love that is meant to set you and me apart as disciples of Jesus. Scripture says in 1 John 4:7-11:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 

Paul sums up his beautiful description of love in 1 Corinthians 13:13 this way:“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” And Jesus, when asked what the greatest commandment is, said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).

You were created to give and receive love. Love is your highest calling. God has set you apart to minister to others, sharing the genuine love you’ve been shown. It’s only in living for love that you will truly find peace and purpose. It’s only in the giving and receiving of genuine love that you will feel whole and satisfied. The Bible is clear about God’s plan for you.God intends to pour his love out over you to the level of overflowing, enabling others to get a glimpse of his vast love for them through your life.

So, how can you be a person who shows genuine love to those around you? What does a life lived for love look like? It starts with spending time daily encountering the vast ocean of God’s love for you. In John 13:34, Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” The disciples could only love each other because they had experienced firsthand the incredible love of Jesus. You will not be able to love genuinely if you aren’t receiving God’s love for yourself. You must take time every day to simply encounter the love of your heavenly Father. His love is designed to lay the foundation for the good works you do. He never intends for you to give what you haven’t received. Romans 12:9-10 proves to be great instruction for living a life of genuine love. Paul writes, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” Choose to engage in good over evil. Fill your life with all that is good. Show grace and respect to others because that is what your heavenly Father has done for you. Live a life of outdoing those around you in showing love and honor.

God has chosen to reveal his love to the world through your life. He’s committed to using you to bring others to himself. And he has a perfect plan to mold and shape you through his love into a person who naturally shows genuine love to others out of the overflow of God’s love in your own life. You don’t need to place the weight of others’ salvation on your shoulders. Instead, encounter the love God has for you today. Let his perspective of you change the way you see yourself and others. And simply love those around you with the love you’ve been shown. Choose to live a life of genuine love today and find out just how broad, long, high, and deep is the love of Christ for both you and others around you (Ephesians 3:18-19).

Guided Prayer:

1. Spend time receiving God’s love for you. Ask him to make his nearness known to you. Let his presence fill up the places of your heart that need a fresh encounter with him.

“That according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:16-19

2. Ask God to give you a fresh revelation of how he sees you. Ask him to mold and shape you into the person he would have you be. Allow his grace and love to transform your heart.

3. Now ask the Spirit to help you show genuine love to others. Who around you needs to be genuinely loved by you today? Who needs to be shown honor and respect? Let the love that you’ve received fill you with the desire and power to love others well.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” John 13:34

Extended Reading: 1 John 4

Transforming Burnout..Dr. Michael A. Milton

 Transforming Burnout

By Dr. Michael A. Milton

“As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy.” (2 Timothy 1:4, ESV) 

The Presenting Issue of Burnout
Pastoral burnout is a reality. The damaging effects of pastoral burnout are experienced by the pastor, the pastoral family, the congregation, community, and the Church at large. But burnout can happen to anyone. It often happens to, of all people, those who trust in Christ, clergy or not.

Burnout comes from many things, but mostly false expectations meeting reality. We anticipate one thing and get another. That leads to a loss of meaning. A loss of meaning leads to spiritual depression. That is burnout. It is quite different from fatigue. Burnout is an existential crisis of faith or even of living. It is a build-up for a Christmas morning from a Hallmark movie only to wake up in Phoenix in a hotel room, or even more deflating, awake to see piles of presents but no change in your heart when the wrapping is thrown out.

Burnout is not rare. On the contrary. My experience is that burnout happens to all of us at one time or another. I have known it. Perhaps, no one has known it more than those who give their lives to preach the gospel. Charles Haddon Spurgeon experienced what we would today call “burnout,” and it caused severe depression and months away from ministry. Billy Graham experienced it. We all do. Mercifully, the Bible is not about fairy tales. The Bible both defines life and reflects life as it is lived, not as it is dreamed. So, the Bible treats burnout.

The Pastoral Epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are very good places to go to learn about how God can transform our seasons of burnout. Paul is brutally honest about ministry. Think about this one verse: “As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy” (2 Timothy 1:4). In just one verse, we can witness the effects of ministry: Sad memories, tears resulting from existential pain in ministry, separation, isolation, and a longing for joy.

In the Pastoral Epistles, any false expectations are not only bashed against the jagged rocks of reality but cared for through God-ordained prescriptions for not only defeating burnout but transforming it. According to the Pastoral Epistles, the expectations for ministry are many and are often quite different from academic notions of ministry. Indeed, for those who have been in ministry, the Pastoral Epistles paint a remarkably accurate picture of our shared realities in ministry. Those realities involve the presence of bad actors, the need for confrontation and correction, and the necessary requirement for pastors to be built up in faith in Jesus Christ and in our calling to meet the trying realities of ministry to broken, hurting, manipulative, and struggling human beings.

The failure to be honest with biblical expectations (or the choice of holding unrealistic expectations) for ministry produces burnout: i.e., a loss of meaning that can give an opening for sorrow and in some cases sin. 

1. False expectations of others cause burnout. Transfer your expectations of good to God.
Jesus is reliable; humans are not so much. Paul addresses this in 1 Timothy 1 with false teachers. "As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith."

Timothy became pastor to a ministry that was rife with error, theological errors that led to very tangible sin. Those who preach the gospel and all of us who are in the church must realize that the ideal is not a person but a Savior. Though the Bible teaches we should demand a long obedience in the same direction, that is a sustained faithfulness, of those who shepherd the churches, we know that we are all on the way.

Burnout comes from false expectations of others. New life comes from a transfer of trust to Jesus.

2. False notions about a relationship with God cause burnout. But God relates to us by a covenant of grace. 
The default human framework for a relationship with God is transactional. It could be summarized like this, “I will do something for God and He will do something for me.” Paul addresses this in addressing Timothy’s need to focus on the grace of Jesus.

Paul addressed this with Timothy early on. Paul models how to live and how to minister with his testimony of God’s grace: “I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

Thus, our relationship with God is grounded in grace made available by repentance and trust in the resurrected and ascended Savior Jesus Christ. Salvation is grace plus or minus nothing. Grace by the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus is the supernatural activity of God that transforms. It is the transforming power of evangelism. Our testimonies of God’s grace through Christ coming mercifully to us remains not only a Spirit-blessed way to witness to others but to encourage our own lives. Bear your testimony in your own life. It is your one sermon that you preach no matter where you go or what happens. Burnout can produce a new sprig of hope when we live out of the nutrient of God’s grace. Grace converts. Grace heals. In a word, grace transforms.

3. When we think we can go it alone, we burn out. God has provided a means of grace to grow in Him.
“Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:13–16, ESV) 

Ministers cannot rely on their own strength. All believers can come to believe that we have enough manna stored up from prior time with God that it will get us through. You might have enough power in your smartphone to go without charging while you drive to the local grocery. But would you take off on an extended journey without a source of power? In a similar way, Christ saves us once and for us. He makes us to be His own. But the power to walk in this life, to walk away from sin and toward God, requires His presence and power. And that only comes through Word, Sacrament, and Prayer.

Intersecting Faith and Life:
Burnout comes from false expectations. The remedy is to have faith in God, not others, be strengthened in God’s grace to you, not in a theological formula, and to practice the life of a disciple according to the Scriptures.

The intentional, controlled burning of a cow pasture is necessary to return nutrients to the soil. The grass is greener. The livestock is healthier. And so, it is with faith in Christ. Burnout does not have to be the end. If Christ can redeem a cross and make it a crown, He can cause your burnout to turn around. For in the gospel life, as in the gospel story, the things that seek to break us become the things that bless us. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Prayer
O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

When Opposition Comes (and It Will)..Jennifer Waddle

 When Opposition Comes (and It Will)

By Jennifer Waddle

Today's Bible Verse: O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.” - Psalm 3:1-2 (ESV)

Of all the things that are uncertain in this life, there is something we can be sure of—opposition. Opposition will come, in one form or another, and we won’t always be prepared for it.

In the work place, it may come as a challenge to our ideas or strategies. In our families, it may be a retaliation against our principles. And in faith, opposition may come as a mockery or even a threat.

King David knew the severity of opposition and experienced it regularly throughout his reign. More than once, he fled into the mountains, fearing for his life. Frequently, he cried out to God over the extreme opposition he faced.

“Many are my foes! Many are rising against me!”

David’s experiences with his adversaries were most likely far greater than anything we have experienced or will experience. But no matter what, we can be sure of this: God is our Great Defender. There is no greater defense than that of our Father in heaven. And He urges us to allow Him to deal with our opposers instead of taking matters into our own hands.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” Romans 12:19

If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to jump into “defense” mode. It can be difficult to let things roll off my back, especially when I feel wronged. Yet, so often in my rehearsed plans of retaliation, I sense the gentle voice of the Spirit saying, “Peace…be still. Let Me go before you in this.”

When we surrender our will to the Father, no matter how justified we feel, there will be an unexplainable peace that comes. Surrendering our “fists-in-the-air” attitudes and plans of pay-back will always result in a better outcome—an outcome that is surrounded by certainty that reminds us, “God’s got this.”

The more we live out our faith in Christ, the more people will oppose what they don’t fully understand. It’s a way of retaliating against something that challenges them in some way. If you and I are actively living out our faith, walking in the fruit of the Spirit and showing God’s love, that will be a challenge for some. And in that challenge, we may find ourselves greatly opposed. Harsh words, divisive questions, and rude comments might be the ways in which people come against us. But just as David, in Psalm 3, took those oppositions to the Lord, we, too, can release them to our Mighty Defender. For in the end, only God can right the wrongs of unjust opposition.

But the Lord has been my defense, and my God the rock of my refuge. Psalm 94:22 (NKJV)

A Prayer to Be Led by the Holy Spirit..Kristine Brown

 A Prayer to Be Led by the Holy Spirit

By Kristine Brown

“Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!” - Psalm 143:10 ESV

Standing in the worship service, I felt a tug in my chest. I’d been praying for months and asking God to show me what I could do for him. To reveal my purpose. Now, in this moment, I knew God was calling me to use the gifts he’d given me to serve him. I walked out of the church with anticipation and excitement for where God would lead me. But the next day, as I sought the Lord for guidance, I realized I had no clue what to do first.

Praying and waiting for God's direction can be a test of patience. If we get impatient, we may question every step, overanalyze open doors, and even wonder, “If I make a wrong turn, will I miss God?” Throughout history, God’s people have been led by the Holy Spirit, but staying in step with him is not easy. It is something we must practice with intention. 

Psalm 143:10 gives us the perfect starting verse as we seek to be led by the Spirit in our daily lives. It says, “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!” The psalmist describes the Holy Spirit as good, which reminds us that following God is always the best choice, even when things ahead look shaky. It’s hard to know which path to take, but God promises to be with us for the journey as he reveals each faith step. His thoughts toward us are good.

Paul and Silas understood what it meant to follow the Spirit’s lead. They had a plan for sharing the gospel of Jesus, but the Spirit of God blocked the way they intended to go. They knew what God wanted them to do, so they trusted the Holy Spirit to show them where and how to do it.

“And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” Acts 16:6-7 ESV

I’d love to have the confidence of Paul and Silas when it comes to listening to the Holy Spirit! But sometimes, the noise of this world drowns out his voice. The good news is that we can learn to be better listeners. By making time for prayer and seeking more of the Holy Spirit, we will become aware of his leading. When we focus on him more, his voice becomes clearer.

Have you ever sensed God wanted you to do something but were uncertain about what steps to take to see it through? You felt that tug at your heart that only grew stronger by the day, but you had no idea how to start. God is with you, ready for you to seek guidance through his precious Holy Spirit. Let’s begin with this prayer to be led by the Spirit and let him teach us to do his will.

Let’s pray:

Dear Lord,
Teach me to do your will. I know you’ve called me to serve you, but I don’t know what to do next. I want to be led by the Holy Spirit, so I can live out the special purpose you have for me. I seek you today, Father. Let your good Spirit guide me.

Isaiah 30:21 reads, “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.” Sometimes I don’t know which way to go. Help me hear the Holy Spirit’s voice. Teach me how to slow down and take a break from the noise of the world in order to hear you clearly. Help me discern your voice above all others and trust where you lead me.

When I get impatient, thank you for reminding me to seek the fruits of the Spirit, including patience and faithfulness. I know you are with me, and I will continue listening as you direct me to take the next step. Thank you for giving me the Holy Spirit to lead me. In Jesus’ name, I pray, Amen.

Resurrection!..Dr. Charles Stanley

 Resurrection!

Dr. Charles Stanley

John 20

Within three days Jesus's followers went from heartbroken sadness to triumphant jubilation. The cross screamed, “The End,” making them feel hopeless and helpless. But the resurrection trumpeted, “The Beginning,” bringing confidence and courage. The cloud of doubt and despair that had shrouded them melted away and was replaced with unshakeable faith.

Can you imagine how they felt when they realized Jesus had risen from the dead? Suddenly hope came alive; now everything He had said was validated as truth. They had not believed a lie. His victory over death was the acid test that forever sealed their sure conviction that He was the Messiah.

We commemorate Jesus's death on the cross with solemnity, but the resurrection calls for thunderous applause, praise, and song. All the blessings that come our way through the Savior’s cross are confirmed by the resurrection. It proved that the Father was satisfied with the Son’s payment for our sins. Now we can know that our transgressions are forgiven and we’re eternally secure.

What’s more, Jesus promises that we, too, will be resurrected and given new bodies. Physical death could not hold Him, nor will it overpower us. Because He overcame the grave, His followers have the same kind of life He has—eternal and indestructible.

As Christians, we have the right to celebrate Easter with great rejoicing. Because of this event, our lives have been forever changed. We’ve been transformed and given new life. With unwavering faith, we trust the Bible because Christ’s power over the grave proves He can and will fulfill every word.