We have 4 new devotionals on the YouVersion app!
New Devotionals!
Will We Choose Love Or Hate?
In Matthew 5:21-22 (NLT), Jesus says this:
21 “You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ 22 But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.
In Jesus’ eyes, hate is as heinous a sin as murder. So, I’m asking myself and I’m asking you, my brothers and sisters: Are we who call ourselves followers of Christ guilty of murder?
On September 10th, 2025, Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event in Utah. On the same day, there was another school shooting in Colorado, where 2 students were shot. In the same week, Israeli military operations in Gaza, Yemen, and Qatar killed over 110 people, including some civilians. Also, in the same week, a Russian airstrike killed 24 elderly Ukrainians collecting pensions, and Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally, attended by over 110,000 people, saw 26 police officers injured. (Sources: CPR News, Al Jazeera, MSN, Democracy Now, The Telegraph)
In the face of all of this death, I find myself becoming alarmingly numb to the loss of life. I’m also observing the surge of emotions going through my heart as I see the comments on social media in response to Charlie Kirk’s death, and I’m asking myself: Am I guilty of murder? I may not have killed anyone, but am I just as guilty of contributing to the violence in this world?
In the same sermon in Matthew 5, Jesus said (NLT):
9 God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.
And:
43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.
Our very identity as children of God is not that of a warrior fighting for Christian values through political power or social media influence. The image of the Christian hero battling a human enemy is absent from Jesus’ teachings and example. Jesus taught and modelled not an earthly power struggle but a love that sacrificially persists in the face of hatred, persecution, and even violence.
We have become embroiled in an unholy battle. Whether we fight through social media tirades, in-person debates, political rallies, or online watch lists, we must disentangle ourselves, repent, and get back to the foundation of Christianity – love.
The very first step in loving one another is listening. We need to really listen with our hearts to those with whom we disagree and put ourselves in their shoes. We don’t have to agree with them, but if we are to be peacemakers, we must be willing to empathize with them.
It doesn’t matter where we most naturally lean toward on the political spectrum; the people on the other side are human just like us. They are human beings looking for love, acceptance, and respect.
I firmly believe that the key to de-escalating most of the social conflict in the world today is the eradication of shaming. Nobody likes to be told that they are bad people. Nobody. The activism of the LGBTQ+ community and pro-choice activists is, I believe, at the root, a response to decades of shame. They have been told repeatedly in many different ways that they are bad. That is not how God sees them, and as Christians, it was our job to love them, and in the main, we failed. We failed, and Satan stepped into the void to create bitterness, resentment, anger, and hatred.
It is the same with people of colour in America. We have been told for decades that we are less than the white man. Again, the Christians of European heritage who were supposed to love their brothers and sisters of African heritage have largely failed. Sometimes their silence in the face of our suffering has been deafening. Again, Satan has stepped into the void to the point that there is now a pervasive layer of anger in the heart of much of the black community toward white people.
However, more recently, the pendulum has swung the other way. The shame finger has been pointed at males, particularly the white male, and those who hold to conservative values. I wonder if, at the heart of white nationalism, is a desperate cry to stop being told that everything about the Western white man is bad. Maybe the whitewashing of the museums and educational system is just a cry to be told something good and noble about their heritage. We, the black Christian community, have also failed to love the white man. And again, Satan is stepping into the void as we speak.
‘You are bad’ is not a message anyone of any race, gender, or sexual orientation wants to hear pounded into them over and over again. And more importantly, it is not a Godly message. It is, however, exactly what the evil one wants to pound into our hearts. It is a tactic with one goal in mind – death and destruction.
But THIS is the battle, my brothers and sisters, that we must fight – the battle to love every person no matter who they are, what they believe, the values they have, or the background that they come from, with unconditional love. Can we tell people about their goodness? I’m not saying to hide the truth, but can we also remind people of the best of themselves?
Can we arise with such radical love as this for our enemies? We are the only ones who can! Jesus Christ – Love – lives in us! We can say to the women and men, blacks and whites, immigrants and nationals, straight and gay, cisgender and transgender, conservatives and liberals that maybe we don’t see eye to eye on some issues, but we want to understand your perspective… and even if we have to agree to disagree, we still LOVE YOU unconditionally as a precious human being made in God’s image!
So, as I watch my social media feeds fill with an escalation of hatred in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death… as the keyboard warriors double down on their positions… I want to leave you with this: The choice my brothers and sisters, for us… (not for the world) …but for us as ambassadors of Christ… is not between liberal or conservative but between hatred or love of our enemies. That is the only choice that is important; the only choice that has the power to overcome the real enemy of our souls and change the world.
There is hope, and that Hope resides in us!
Reflections On Christian Leadership With Henri Nouwen Part 2
To start my second instalment of this blog, here is the quote from In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri Nouwen that resonated with me:
“Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead. Medicine, psychiatry, and social work all offer us models in which “service” takes place in a one-way direction. Someone serves, someone else is served, and be sure not to mix up the roles! But how can we lay down our life for those with whom we are not even allowed to enter into a deep personal relationship? Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life. We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God. Therefore true ministry must be mutual.
Oh, how I feel these words in my bones! In my area of interest, discipleship, I have become totally disinterested in preaching, teaching, and ministry that is devoid of the minister vulnerably opening his/her soul to his/her brothers and sisters. I have little interest in your expositions on Moses or Elijah or Paul, but I am keenly interested in how these Biblical examples intersect with the outworking of your personal salvation. I am not interested in what you read. I am interested in what you are living. It has almost become an obsession of mine – a search for a people on fire for God who are willing to live in mutuality and vulnerability.
I have generally found that the discipleship model in the church is a teacher-student/s or mentor-mentee/s relationship where the teacher or mentor is the expert who takes the student/s under his/her wing. All of the learning is assumed to be one-way. The student bares all the intimate details of her soul, while the teacher gives wise advice and remains closed and inaccessible.
What did Jesus say? He called His disciples friends on account of the fact that He wanted a more mutual relationship – one where He shared His plans with them (John 15:15). Jesus even invited three of His disciples to be with Him in His moment of deepest travail in the garden of Gethsemane.
I am thirsty for a space where disciples gather together to seek Jesus in heart-to-heart community. Where the numbers are small, the sharing is deep, and nobody is trying to fix me, save me, or heal me. I long to get together with a small group of individuals who are on fire for Jesus, hungry to seek Him with all their heart… but who are also hungry to be knit heart-to-heart with their brothers and sisters.
My wife and I have embarked on a bold experiment to create spaces such as these. This is what shapes the way we do our workshops and, more recently, what birthed our discipleship groups. It was first a desire that we had for community for ourselves before it was a desire to provide community for others. We get as much, or more, from our workshops as we give.
All true ministry is mutual. All true ministry comes from a relationship with our fellow man that, at the deepest level, recognizes the other as of equal value. We are all students, and there is one Teacher. We are all in the same boat. The minute we see ourselves as higher than the other is the minute we step out of the heart of Christ, who emptied Himself of the glory of heaven and became a man like us in order to save us. Who came down to our level and lifted us up with Him. Who took the lower position of a servant to mankind as the path to ministry and influence.