Rev. Ray and Pat Amos
Romans 12:9
DEVOTION FOR TODAY, January 6, 2020
“Love must be without hypocrisy.”
Several years ago I pulled up in the parsonage driveway and found a note on the door. It was one way of communication before cell phones. The message was written on large paper so that it would be seen, and it said that a church member’s relative had died. I was thankful to receive the information, but something bothered me greatly. The writer of the note pointed out that the member was a large contributor to the church.
To me, that was unnecessary and out of tune with the Gospel. In the Kingdom of God, we respond because someone needs God’s love; not because we might need their contribution. This is the very example that Jesus gave us. God’s love is not “more for some” and “less for others.”
I have heard people say about another, “He/she is worth (a dollar amount). The worth of a person is not measured by what they give, but what Christ gave for all of us. God believed that all of us are worth what Jesus did at Calvary.
Prestige is an earthly matter that will have no place in Heaven. We should quickly learn two lessons while on this earth. The first is, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought (Romans 12:3), and the other is that God shows no partiality; therefore we should love one another as we love ourselves. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. The only one who is higher than all who are standing there is the one who hung on that cross.
In my memory I hear my father playing the piano and singing a song that he loved to sing, “Who am I that a King would bleed and die for? … The answer I may never know, why He ever loved me so, but to an old rugged cross he would go; for who am I?”
The answer is found in who He is: GOD IS LOVE. Jesus went to the cross because of who we are; we are sinners. He did what He did knowing we had nothing to give that wasn’t already His. There was one motive, HE LOVED US. “Let this same mind be in us that is in Christ Jesus.”
Grace and Peace, Rev Ray
“Link to YouTube Video – Who Am I That A KING Would Bleed and Die for Me”
