Live Free with Josh Howerton - Set Apart from the World | Ep. 21 | Monday March 6, 2023

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

We are to hate evil but never people. Today’s episode is a gentle reminder that no matter how evil a person seems, you should still want them to find the same forgiveness and grace God gave you so generously. Let others see the goodness of God in you and pray that they’ll be drawn to it too.  For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. joining us today. My name is Mike Bro, and we get to hang for a few minutes every day, just asking God to stick

some truth, some hope, some encouragement, some wisdom, some joy in our soul. And man, I hope you're having a great day and finding that walking with God is what we were created to do. Hey, we're just hanging for a little while in chapter 12 of the book of Romans in the New

Testament of the Bible. If you're kind of new to the Bible as you're scrolling through it, it's right after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the book of Acts, and then there Romans. It's a letter from this guy who was chosen by God to spread the good news of Jesus all over the world. The guy's name is Paul. But talking about how when you walk with God, you're just one of those people that maybe people look at your life and go, man, I don't know how to describe it. They're just like built different. Whatever it is they have, I want some

of that. Don't just pretend you love others. Like really love them. Let genuine love define your life. he adds this, and hate what is evil cling to what is good. Now this kind of echoes what Paul writes in other letters saying, you know what, we just need to be done with the deeds of darkness. We ought to walk as children of the light. He's just saying there ought to be a bad taste in your mouth when it comes to the former dark stuff you used to be a part of. And here he uses a very strong word. He actually tells us to hate evil, to hate what evil does to you, to hate what evil does to your family, to hate what evil does to other people, to hate what evil does to this world. There just ought to be some things that you and I absolutely disdain. We ought to feel

righteous anger over oppression and injustice and abuse and trafficking and devaluing of human life. There's a lot of evil stuff that we ought to push back against. When you and I are no longer shocked by sin, we could become apathetic and very complacent. In fact, I like the word, the old King James version uses here for hate what is evil. The word is abhor. I mean, that just sounds like what you're supposed to do, right? It's a great old word, abhor. And this is what it means, to regard with disgust and hatred.

So we are to abhor, regard with disgust, hate and disdain evil. But never people. Now, granted, there are evil people in this world. And honestly, sometimes I struggle with it all. But when I look at the evil, dark stuff in my own life, and I see how much I need grace and realize that I have never locked eyes with someone Jesus did not die for, I have to want for them genuinely to find the same forgiveness, the same grace that I have received. So I want to keep my heart really hardened toward evil, but very soft toward people.

Hate what is evil. Then he says, cling to what is good. Have you seen those gorilla glue commercials where someone's trying to fix something this huge gorilla shows up and just like scares the life out of them? And then he hands him a bottle of glue and they go, oh, of course.

The word used here for cling, if Paul could have used it, he said gorilla glue. Because he's talking about the strongest bond possibly saying bond yourself, glue yourself as strong as you can to good friends and good books and good music and good posts and good conversations and good movies and good podcasts.

What you cling to will cling to you. And if it's full of goodness, that goodness will start to rub off on other people. So my prayer for all of us today is that we just be done with darkness. And instead, we'd walk full of goodness and love and light. I'm praying specifically that God would cross my path, your path today, with somebody who needs that light. Man, I hope you have a great day. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in today.

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