Thurs.’s Devo - Exhortations to Christians

Read Romans 12:9-12a The rest of this chapter is a list of things we should be living as a Christian which starts with pure, unhypocritical love. We are to hate evil and love good, love each other like we were brothers and sisters and prefer one another to ourselves. The next one is to not be slothful in business. This one really hit me because I have experienced some really bad business people lately. Slothful means tardy, irksome or grievous. That means you are dependable, on time, and you stand by your word. What a witness that is in a world that seems to have little concern about the other person. God doesn’t separate our business life with our spiritual life; it is all the same. The next exhortation is to be fervent in spirit which just means on fire spiritually. Fervent has to do with boiling liquids or making solids glow. It also means to be earnest. So the Holy Spirit in us would be the liquid oil that should be burning, which would make us, the solid, glow. If the Holy Spirit is alive within us we will do the next thing on the list which is serving the Lord. We are to rejoice in hope. “Rejoice” in the Greek means to be cheerful and calm especially on meeting and parting. It means to always begin and end on a happy note. We do this not because our circumstances warrant it, but because we have hope in a God that does not disappoint if we trust him. It doesn’t mean that we have to lie about our problems, it just means that we wisely choose who to share them with. The public needs to see Jesus on our faces, not our problems. They have enough of their own. Our hope is that we won’t have these problems for long - they don’t have that hope. Lord, help us to share this hope you have put inside us and to love always.