Brotherly Love

Last week at church we went over Romans 12: 9-21.

My pastor said that these verses tell us how to love.

Some of these instructions are easier then others.

But, particularly verse 10 says to “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love....”
My pastor talked about what brotherly love is. For some reason I never really thought about what this means before. I thought brotherly love was just the love all us Christians just share together; and yes, that is partially true.

But brotherly love is family love. It’s letting arguments go, it’s letting the water go under the bridge, because when it comes down to it; whatever they’ve done doesn’t matter, because they are your family.

Thankfully, God has blessed me with good Christian friends that I honestly do consider my family, more then they probably realize. People that I have experienced true brotherly love with, we’ve had to put our water under the bridge... and when it was all said and done, we were all blessed because of it.

Another thing that sticks out to me, that I would like to share from this sermon is about making peace.

I’ve wondered this for a while, I don’t know if I shared these thoughts before- But if God is on our side, and He will avenge our enemies... how does that work when we are enemies with our brother and sisters in Christ?

Well, I realized that as brothers and sisters in Christ, we’re suppose to be at peace with each other, we’re commanded to love and live differently from the world. How can God be for one of His children and not for the other? How can we be examples to this world if we can’t put away our differences to love another sibling in Christ?

God’s really been speaking to me about peace lately. I’m afraid that I’m not at peace with one of my siblings in Christ, and yes of course, some of you know exactly who I’m talking about- and I’m not trashing this person, not in the least bit. I still care about this person- and if I knew how to bring peace towards our broken relationship I would.

“You can’t make peace, because that takes two people, but one person can bring peace.”

Dear Old Friend, in case you ever read this- I want to bring peace into our non-existent relationship, I’m not asking for friendship. Just peace. I also never had the chance to tell you that I forgave you... you are forgiven.