Devotion and Honor

You were created for community. When God designed humans, He made us with the intention of placing us within a loving family. Today, we call that family the Church.

God’s original intention was that we would exist within a family of other believers. He didn’t intend for us to exist in isolation or separated from other people. Life was not meant to be lived alone.

Regardless of what your family experience was like, God intended for His family to be loving and caring. And it’s the qualities of God’s family that Paul is writing about in Romans 12.

Paul says to be devoted to one another in love. That means that we are to walk alongside other people through the various seasons of life. We should never abandon people when life gets hard.

Paul also encourages us to honor others. Instead of seeking self-recognition, we should honor and encourage each other. Instead of pursuing what seems best for us, we should seek the good of other people first.

Devotion and honor are just two aspects of loving people well, but Jesus said that the world will recognize us as His disciples by the way that we love. This means that we have to genuinely love others—not just pretend to love them. And the place we need to start showing genuine honor is within our spiritual family. Rather than letting self-promotion divide the family of God, our goal should be to honor those around us.

If we won’t learn how to love people who follow Jesus, then we won’t know how to love people who don’t.

That’s why we should frequently pause and take an assessment on how we are doing at loving others. So take a moment right now to think about the ways in which you loved and honored people this past week. Write down two or three things you can do to continue to show love to those in your life.