Latest / The Daily Word / August 24 – No Second-Class Christians
Transcript
- Cory: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good we hours of the night. Whenever you're joining us, welcome to the Daily Word Podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Corey Barnes, and it's my privilege to pastor Arkitabacampus. And I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another Daily Word episode where we're going to be doing a devotion out of the New Testament portion of our Bible reading plan. Now today is August the twenty fourth, and that means that on the docket is first John chapter. five. Now I told y'all back on Thursday when we began this book that the theme of all of John's writings really is love and boy howdy has he delivered on the topic of love. Now in looking at today this is the final chapter in his book and honestly we're gonna be just looking at verse one But before we get to that, just a quick tip to help you with your own devotional life. if you read through the Bible reading that you have planned for the day, whether it be the life journal plan or or another plan that you're following, if at the end of it you just don't really feel like there's something that the Lord's spoken to you on or you don't really feel like anything was particularly applicable and you're not getting anything out of your reading, my recommendation to you is if you have the time, go back and read it again in a different translation. I know we all have our translations that we're accustomed to and we try to like I try to memorize out of the same translation so that it's consistent. But there Are a lot of translations for a good reason. Because there's a lot of good translations. Yes, there's differences and in the techniques they use to translate, the manuscripts that they choose to translate from to form the their translation of the Bible, but many of them are very, very good, and sometimes it's just the way that they phrased things differently than than The other translation that really helps make things stand out. And that was the case for me today. I read this in a few different translations. my go-tos are gonna be New King James and then NIV, flip flopping between which one's my first preference. and then today I actually also ended up going to the English Standard Version, which is where today's devotion is gonna come out of. 1 John 5 1 and then ESV. Everyone. Who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. Now I know this is not some revolutionary concept. we know that the commandments are love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Like those are the the two commands that Jesus gave us that govern. our entire life. Like this is not mind blowing, but this perspective tightens it in a in a way that really stood out to me today because we're aware that we're supposed to love the world, right? Like we're supposed to love those who profess completely different life values, even those that are completely hostile to us and our ideology and and the f our God. Like we We are aware we're supposed to love those people, but what about other Christians specifically what about other Christians who have been born of God but maybe don't practice their walk with God the same way we do or whose beliefs don't necessarily align with ours? I was thinking about the fact that That there are lot of Christians that I could sit down with that I would have core theological distinctions with. Like I would interpret scripture one way, they would interpret it another way, and we may never come eye to eye on that. However, I was just thinking about the fact that you know what I could sit down with them and I could have a whole lot of conversation around the things we do agree on before I ever got to anything we don't agree on. You know, we all have a little bit of xenophobia. It's just part of the human condition. the fear of other, the fear of something different than us. And sometimes that bleeds over into our Christian life too. But we're called to love all of those who are born of God, whether they go to church services that look like ours, whether they do things that we don't fully understand. We're called to love them. And there are no second class citizens in the kingdom of heaven. I grew up it was never said, it was never taught at my church, but somehow I got into the mentality and the belief that, like, you know, we're Pentecostal, we believe in praying in the Holy Spirit, we believe in miracles, signs, and wonders, and somehow I got into my head. That anyone who didn't believe in those things was somehow less than me in their spiritual life. And it wasn't until I ended up my first job in high school was a di as a dishwasher at a restaurant that was owned by a fabulous Lebanese immigrant family, and they were Christians, not spirit-filled Christians, but Christians. And it wasn't until I saw the way they demonstrated love to people and realized that they knew how to love people better than I did. That that kind of started breaking that mold for me. And I started realizing, like, wow, like, yeah, these these people, they love the same Jesus I do. What's it matter if they don't have those things? I believe those things would benefit them, sure, yeah. But it doesn't make them any less than me. Now take that idea. And apply it to any other of the wide spectrum of things that people disagree on in the body of Christ, things that make Thanksgiving dinners sometimes tense instead of amicable. It's okay to discuss our distinctions and our differences and what we believe and the diversity amongst us. But when those things start to get divisive, that's no good. And this is how we know that we love God, that we love those that are born of. God, we love our brothers and sisters in Christ. Even when we don't understand them, even when they don't agree and never will agree with the way we approach God, the way we approach Scripture. Now I'm not talking about heresy, and I'm not talking about things that just mean that they just don't believe the same God we believe in. That's that's a different conversation. I'm not talking about all that. I'm talking about good, solid, Bible believing Christians. That just differ with us on different topics. We don't need to write them off. We need to love them and we need to be in relationship with them because they have things to offer us that are going to strengthen us too. So, application. What circle of Christians in your life do you have? Are you open to conversations with all believers of all different walks of life and different thought processes and philosophies? Or do you have I know some people who kind of have some pet peas theologically that when they start talking to a Christian, they're automatically gonna work it into the conversation. And until they know that that so and so believes like I do, they don't really let them have any kind of they don't really let them into their life or accept them as a brother of Christ. Are we accepting of other Christians purely based upon the fact that they believe in Jesus and And that he has borne them into the kingdom. Is that enough for us? Let's pray. Father, I thank you, Jesus, for who you are. I thank you, Jesus, that you gave your life so that we could all be part of this great big beautiful family that you call the church. I thank you, Lord, that there are many members amongst us and different people that have different functions in the body of Christ, and that it's okay that there's diversity. in thoughts and in ideologies and belief systems in you because you are the same God to all of us regardless of those little nuances and differences. I love you, Jesus. I'm so thankful that you're my God and that I'm your son and that we get to do life together as a church here at Lakeshore. I love you Jesus. Amen