Sincere Love!

This morning I am reading from Romans 12:9-13 NIV:

[9] "Love must be sincere.
Hate what is evil;
cling to what is good.
[10] Be devoted to one another in love.
Honor one another above yourselves.
[11] Never be lacking in zeal,
but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.
[12] Be joyful in hope,
patient in affliction,
faithful in prayer.
[13] Share with the Lord’s people who are in need.
Practice hospitality."

I love it when Paul has these short exhortations. Each of them is worthy of reflection and internalization. I separated each of the main ideas on its own line to actually help me stop and read them individually. So often I would see this all in a paragraph and just read through the list, nodding my head as I read each, agreeing and thinking they sound swell. The reality is that each statement is loaded with truth.

Taking just the first statement -"love must be sincere", there is much to consider. The NASB translation says, "let your love be without hypocrisy" which gets a little closer to Paul's meaning. Sincerity has a little too much emotional warmth in our modern usage of it, Paul is not talking about love that is "well meaning" but rather is talking about love in which there is no falseness at all! No mixed messages, no feigned affection, no faked feeling or putting on a well-practiced persona. His idea of love - the Greek word here is Agape - is the same as Jesus' idea of love in John 15:13 NIV: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.". That is sincere love, love in which there is no falseness, but rather utter selflessness and sacrifice, putting someone else before one's own life. No loving to get something, but loving through giving everything, even to the point of death.

As in was writing that last statement I was reminded of something I read concerning John G. lake and his early missions work in Africa. I have included a brief few paragraphs that exemplifies sincere love. ( http://www.tidenstecken.se/enlake.htm):

"Lake and his churches had one hundred and twenty-five men out of on the field at one time. They were a very young institution, not well known in the world. One day, certain men in England and America began rumours about Lake. Finances got so low under the awful attack, as people withdrew their support, that they soon could not even mail $10 a month to the workers. Then it got so bad he could not even send them $2. Lake did not want to take the responsibility of having men and their families on the frontier under such conditions.

Staff at headquarters sold their clothes, jewellery, pieces of furniture, and in one case their house to bring those one hundred and twenty-five workers off the field for a conference. One night in the progress of the conference, Lake was invited by a committee to leave the room for a minute or two. The conference wanted to have a word by themselves. He stepped out to a restaurant for a cup of coffee and returned soon after.

When John came back in, he found the chairs arranged in an oval, with a little table at the end, and on the table was the bread and wine. Old Father Van der Wall, speaking for the company, said, "Brother Lake, during your absence, we have come to a conclusion; we have made our decision. We want you to serve the Lord's supper. We are going back to our fields (the mission fields they had been assigned and to which they had given their lives). We are going back if we have to walk back. We are going back if we have to starve. We are going back if our wives die. We are going back if our children die. We are going back if we die ourselves. We have but one request. If we die, we want you to come and bury us." The next year he buried twelve men, sixteen wives and children. Lake sadly recounted, "There was not one of them, if they had had a few of the things a white man needs to eat, but what they might have lived."

As an end-note, this sacrifice was not unrewarded, for Lake's ministry exploded afterwards. "His anointed miracle ministry resulted in what has been described as "the most extensive and powerful missionary movement in all Africa (at that time)." As Gordon Lindsay wrote, "during that time he spent five history-making years in South Africa, engaged in a ministry which in some respects rivalled that of the Early Church.". His ministry was responsible for raising over 1,000,000 converts, 625 churches and 1,250 preachers in five years of ministry." ( http://healingrooms.com/index.php?page_id=422 )

That level of commitment, zeal, and love is extreme and thankfully (selfishly) something I haven't been called to live out. However, this perfectly exemplifies the call to lay down our lives in love for our friends and fellow members of the Body of Christ.

Clearly, there is much to mine in Paul's three verses from Romans 12. Let us allow these words to penetrate deeply into our hearts, into our lives and let the Lord bring forth beauty and treasure that is eternal!