This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions, this is day four of our look together at
the book of Romans chapter 12 verses 9-14. As you hit chapter 9, you begin to
take a look at what Paul has to say about what love, what real love looks like.
A lot of people call 1 Corinthians 13 the love chapter of the Bible, but in many
ways Romans 12 beginning in verse 9 is also a love chapter.

Listen to what these verses say, verses 9-14. "Love must be sincere. Hate what
is evil, cling to what is good.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's
people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. " Now even as I read
these verses, it's pretty obvious they're some of the most challenging commands
in the Bible in these verses.

And these are verses that provide us with the conviction to live out real love,
what real love looks like. This is part of the new way of thinking. The new way
of thinking about God, the way we worship him at the beginning of this chapter,
a new way of thinking about others.

These verses even include a new way of thinking about our enemies. They're an
outline of the kind of relationships that we're supposed to have with one
another. All of our relationships are important, but Jesus taught us that our
relationships with other believers are extremely important because the world
around us is going to see Jesus by the way that we love each other.

I know people who would rather try to evangelize the entire world than to try to
get along with other Christians. But if you don't try to get along with other
Christians, you are denying the main way that Jesus said people would see and
therefore be one to him. These are the kind of verses that some Christians hate.

Why? Because they're so easy to understand. We'd rather wrestle with mysteries
than be confronted with the plain truth.

But here it is right here in plain truth. I want you to promise, even as we're
studying through this, to never become so enamored with studying the Bible that
you don't have any time for living the Bible. Bible study that keeps us from
living the truth is sin, honestly.

We're supposed to live the truth, not just hear the truth. After talking about
spiritual gifts, Paul talks about spiritual attitudes. It is possible to try to
use a spiritual gift in an unspiritual way.

Paul says, "I want you to use it in the same kind of way. " It's the same
progression as 1 Corinthians 12 to 1 Corinthians 13. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul
talks about gifts.

In 1 Corinthians 13, he talks about the greatest gift is love. Same thing here.
He talks about the gifts and then goes right into talking about love.

He talks about how you respond to people who persecute you, how you respond to
people who are sad or happy, who have hurt you, who you might see as below you.
He says love must be sincere. Not hypocritical, but sincere.

The church must never turn itself into a stage. This word sincere in the Latin,
sincerus, meant without wax. It was the idea of a paving stone that they would
put wax into a crack in the stone or a clay jar where they would put wax into a
crack and it would look like everything was fine, but somehow cosmetically it
had been just made to look better.

God says be real. Be who you are. As we read through these verses, I want
personally, I want to lead you to use these as an opportunity for change.

Why read these verses if we're not willing to do these verses? Let me just
repeat back some of these phrases and as I repeat them back, you might just
think a green or a red or a yellow in your mind. Green means things are good.

It doesn't stand for perfection. Green stands for growth. Yeah, I'm growing in
that area.

Red stands for resistance. I'm holding God at arm's length in that area. And
yellow stands for, let's make that stand for negligence.

I've never really thought about that. Here's what I mean. That phrase hate what
is evil.

Cling to what is good. How are you doing at that one? Is it red?

I haven't thought about that much lately. Is it yellow? I've been neglecting
that truth.

The hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. Or is it green?

That's an area that I'm growing in. It's interesting how his talk about the
sincerity of love is followed immediately by talk about hate. It's because the
two go together.

True love is more than just sentiment. It is a discerning heart. The more I love
God, the more I will hate sin.

You realize that as I hate the sin in my life, it is an expression of my genuine
love for God. Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good.

A second phrase. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. How are you doing
at that one?

Is it a red? I'm resisting God. I'm resisting loving someone in my life.

Is it a yellow? I haven't thought much about it lately. I'm all caught up in
what I'm doing.

Or is it a green? I'm growing in that area. There's some Greek words here that
are very important when it comes to this brotherly love.

Devoted describes a natural affection for family. Brotherly love. You know that
Greek word, many of you, because it's the word phileos, which we get the city of
brotherly love, Philadelphia, from.

This idea of brotherly love is the idea of what love is supposed to be like in
the body of Christ, in the family of God. It's a family kind of love. How are
you doing at that one?

A third phrase. Honor one another above yourselves. I don't know about you.

That one hits me. That one often is a red. I want to honor other people, but
it's the above myself part that I resist.

Maybe you're there too. Or maybe that's a yellow. I haven't thought much about
that lately.

I think mostly about myself and not even about others. Or maybe you are growing
in that area because of the grace of God. Give each other more honor than
yourselves.

It's amazing. It is amazing what God can do through those who are not afraid to
let others have the credit. Giving away the credit, honoring others.

And then the phrase, never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor
serving the Lord. Is that a red? Yellow?

Are you growing? Is it green? The question here is, how do I keep the spiritual
fires burning?

What do I do when I feel like I'm running out of gas in my relationship with
God? The answer is in the last phrase. You ask yourself, who am I serving?

Never be lacking in zeal. Keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord. The zeal
comes from serving the Lord.

The fervor, the fire, the fuel comes from serving the Lord. That's where the
strength comes from. And when you start losing the zeal, you ask yourself the
question, who am I serving?

A fifth phrase in these verses, be joyful in hope, patient in affliction,
faithful in prayer, red, yellow, or green, resisting, neglecting, or growing.
These verses are verses that are about praise and patience and prayer. And they
ask us some questions.

They ask me the question in hope, am I being joyful or am I being woeful? It's
easy to get down on yourself and on the world when it feels like everything's
against you, but hope makes all the difference. It brings joy, even in a
difficult circumstance.

In affliction, the question here is, am I being patient or am I being insistent?
Am I waiting on God or am I pushing for my way? In prayer, the question is, am I
being faithful or am I being forgetful?

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. And then a sixth
phrase here, share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Share with those who are in need. The word here is koineo, which is the idea of
hospitality. The Greek word for hospitality combines philos, love, and zenos,
strangers.

I put the two together because both are with God's people and with strangers. I
need to have hospitality towards both. Hospitality was incredibly important in
that day because there was no place for people to stay.

There was no motel. And in a desert country, the place to stay and some water
was often the difference between life and death. And spiritually, God is talking
about the continuing importance of hospitality.

The question I ask myself is, where are the deserts in our society today? Where
are the places where we as believers have to meet the need or it's going to
leave people dying? Practice hospitality.

The word for practice here really means more you pursue it, you chase after it.
How are you doing at that one? Red resisting, yellow neglecting, green growing.

How are you doing at that one? And then there's one final phrase, bless those
who persecute you. Bless and do not curse.

Now that one is a challenge. We all know that people outside of the United
States face some of them far greater persecution than we're ever going to face.
But we do still face persecution.

There are two main ways in our country today. It can be through a loss of income
or it can be through a lack of respect. You might lose a job because of the fact
that you have faith in Christ and people just don't want you around.

Or it might be just a lack of respect in a group that you're a part of at school
or somewhere else. You face persecution and therefore you have the temptation to
try to fit in. Instead, God says bless.

Bless even those who persecute you instead of resisting. How are you doing at
that one? Red, yellow, or green.

It's a tough one. As you think about how to do each of these, the truth of the
matter is some of it seems almost impossible doesn't it? Someone wrote me and
said it's almost like trying to be the Proverbs 31 woman.

That chapter that talks about a perfect picture of a wife. This seems like a
perfect picture of a Christian. How am I even going to reach this?

Shouldn't I even give up before I try? God put this picture in his word because
he knows that he can grow us towards this picture. He may not be there yet.

I may not be there yet. But God can grow us in this direction because Jesus is
the perfect picture that we're talking about here. And God wants to make us more
like his son.

So let's pray for his strength right now. Jesus Christ, we thank you. As we read
these words about love, we're not left on our own to try to live this kind of
love.

You want to live it through us. And so our response as we come to the end of
these verses is not to determine to try harder to love today. To put our
schedule better together so we have more time to love.

We may need to do something with our schedule but that's not where it starts. We
begin by saying Jesus, I cannot do this on my own strength. I need your love
flowing not only into my heart but through my heart to love people in this way.

And I pray you'd help me to trust you. Trust you to love me and then trust you
enough to love others. God, this may be new.

A brand new way to love, a brand new way to treat people. But it's also the way
that you love me. And I want to pass along what you've done in my heart, done in
my life to other people.

I want to be an ambassador. I want to be a representative of the kind of love
that Jesus has in this world today. So give me strength that I don't have on my
own and help me today to make the small choices to love the people that are in
my life.

Whether it's my family or my church or my brother or my sister or an enemy. Help
me to make the small choices to love the people in my life. I ask this in Jesus
name.

Amen. Tomorrow we're going to continue this look at what love looks like as we
end our look at Romans chapter 12.