Compassion: Without it you are Guilty of Hate Kelly Durant
I Jn 3:14-18
1 John 3:14-18 New King James Version (NKJV)
14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. 15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?
18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
2.Compassion is sympathy for the suffering and a desire to help!
They say that giving a beggar a piece of bread is a civil duty, but to give him a bread with butter on it, now that is compassion! Compassion is a divine quality something that is in all cultures with a certain measure, but the damaging thing today is that it is something very much lacking in most cultures.
The level of the spiritual, cultural, and moral development of any culture or people could be measured by how much compassion they have on others, especially on others different from their own selves! Reflect on history, I deduct that it has been mostly Christians throughout time that have proven over and over to be the ones to lead and to help when there is a dire need or severe crisis.
Today I want you to ask yourself, how much compassion do I have? How much compassion does this community have? I think it still lacks all that is needed!
3. Are you the center of your universe, or is Jesus love at the center? In order to have compassion, you must have the ability to put yourself into the shoes of the other person. This takes not just a creative mind, but a willing heart!
Think about what is inside of you. If you are only full of your own wants, your own needs, then you are self-focused. You have your-self as the center of your life, or at the center of the universe. This selfishness is what causes societies to come unglued and people start hating each other due to a lack of love.
But if you have Jesus at the center of your life & heart, you will have the same heart of compassion and love that He has, and you will be willing to help anyone, anytime, of any race, just like in the story of the Good Samaritan.
4. Do you, to get what you want, throw a childlike temper tantrum, or do you intimidate and bully, or in hypocrisy spread hate on others who won’t treat you as a king or queen? Being self-focused is hate focused! Having no love means having no God of love in your life which means no salvation either! The verses today, 1 John 3:14,15 have within their context the relationship of how hate is connected to refusing to help someone in need and God equivocates this as murder.
What is the difference between an adult and a child? A child only wants to get what he wants no matter the situation and they scream to get it. Some kids, even as big as teenagers will yell to their parents, “I hate you!” just to try and get what they want from them. We know, we lived through 5 of them!
Un-Christian indoctrinated by the world people do not care if you or the government doesn’t have the money or conditions to please them giving them all the power and money they want, they just want what they want and they therefore try to take it by aggressive force! Haters, and those who accuse others over their class or race are harboring death in their souls. They attract demon possessions and often become murders as stated in 1 John 3:15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
5. Hate=Murder: not giving to others in need! In the state of Alaska, where mostly whites and brown natives share the roads, if a person is on the street with a car motor stalled, by law you must stop and pick up that person. The reason for this is that person could actually freeze to death and die in some -30 below 0 temperatures within 10 minutes!
Not helping someone with a need is heartless and insensitive and it could cause their death. But a real sacrifice to help someone with a need, that is a must, and sacrificial people will often receive honor and praise for being compassionate and saving someone’s life or situation!
Only love, not hate makes you pass from death to life! What we do in this life brings us either praise or scorn from God and from those around us. The people who let their selves be touched by Jesus’ love to the point that they want to be like Him, reveals they have entered into life with Him. However, hate, a which is a violent rejection, is a carnal, natural occurring human quality, but no one admires this horrible quality unless they are brainwashed by Satan’s people. Terrorists, racists, and warmongerers, are those that bring death and suffering to others and themselves. Everyone is on one path or the other, life, or death!
6. Ask yourself, who do you hate secretly? Have you ever really tried to look deep into your heart as to why you do not like someone or somebody or a certain people? You may have an undiscovered bitterness; everyone does, and you need to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what that is so you can be free from it or it will condemn your soul to hell!
Hate manifests itself in bitterness, violence, and a non-stop stream of words that criticize, demean, and divide. Sadly, we see an increase of this of late!
These things separate you from the God of love. We hear in the media they hate of races but I have discovered many people secretly hate pastors, or sincere Christian leaders because they are envious of their power and influence over people.
They are jealous over the love they receive because they cannot get love because they do not sew love to reap it! So they want to destroy anyone loving not being willing to love and sacrifice themselves as Jesus did. Jesus warned that if they hated Him, they will hate you and me as well.
7. To get love and compassion you and I must give our lives in service to Jesus! There is no noble society where selfishness is worshipped as virtue, all cultures value the sacrifice of others. But sacrifice to be honored by God should be done in the way as Jesus defined it in Matthew 25, caring for the hungry, thirsty, and poor; caring for the imprisoned and the destitute.
Compare what Jesus taught to this bad example of sacrifice: In India, with the Hindu religion, the tradition has been that wives will allow their selves to be burned alive with their husbands dead bodies when they are at their funerals!
That is a type of sacrifice our God of love does not desire! Laying down your life for Jesus means doing as he did, and that was in loving serving sacrifice. But these poor ladies do this because their idea of God is sadly totally distorted from the truth of God. Terrorists operate in the same way praising sacrifice whn it involves murder. Do you see how important it is to follow how Jesus defines what compassion and sacrifice really should be?
8. By their fruits you will know them! (Matt 7:20)The people that do good things for others and claim they do it for the love of our Lord Jesus, and it is obvious are not seeking glory, compensation, or recognition, should be honored as true and good. Those that do real deeds of compassion must be motivated out of their love for God. In the Salvation Army this ‘love for God’ is even in our mission statement.
Notice how in the community ever now and then some persons may comment terrible things about someone doing good, and why? These critics obviously have an evil heart and do not understand how people can be sincere in doing good works, that people do good because of pure love. Bad people always falsely accuse, and often these same ones got helped by the ones they criticize!
I have experienced at times hateful words that came from nowhere! For example there might be a volunteer helping us many days and then later in comes to light that some others would be secretly accusing that they were getting their rent paid by us to help them. Do you see how evil minds fabricate lies? Usually people who accuse falsely have never been ones to do good works and help with a sincere heart, have you ever noticed that?
9. The compassion of the world?! Satan is compassionate, in his own way, have you ever thought about that? He wants to show you and me he is more just and loving than God. However, in his ‘social justice scheme of things, the sharing of the goods from the rich to give to the poor, or from one people group to another, he murders millions!
Satan works hard with his demons to run this world’s government systems, usurping God’s authority, and how does he do it? He establishes political systems of abusive that with murderous power give some crumbs to the poor to show how he will take care of the people better than what God’s people can.
Communism, the forced sharing of wealth offends God (it is imitating and mocking Acts 2:44.45) and enslaves everyone since it puts a gun in the face of those who worked to get what they have in order to give it to those who did not work or do anything to deserve it. What makes these traitors and terrorist feel worthy of these stolen goods is their faithfulness to worship their horrible socialist (or religious) leaders as gods for being so compassionate. Abhorrent, don’t you think?
10. Excuses or compassion? In the end Satan convinces people to follow corrupt systems of false hopes when God’s people are doing too little to help. With all the churches in the United States, you would think there should not be a need that the government give a check to the unemployed or sick. Christians are supposed to be taking care of each other and of others outside of the church who are suffering.
In the new testament recall God’s sharing system: Acts 2:44-4544 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. If we’re not helping each other, then we are failing God, and he will accept no excuses.
Love implies action! Compassion! Think a minute, what evidence is there for you to prove you have showed compassion to someone? Could you tell me about something you have done recently, and do you have a habit of helping those in need? If you are not in action, if there are not deeds to back up your words of good wishes for others, then compassion to you is just an esoteric term, not a tangible reality manifested in this world. It is not too late to get busy for the Lord!
11. Start with us: The SA is known for its compassion. I probably have told you many times that I love the Salvation’s Army way of serving others. Imagine you are not just being a part of a church but a part of a massive social work with over 3 million Soldiers and volunteers, with thousands of shelters, rehab centers, schools, and assistance happening world-wide! For me it is the most compassionate church that exists, that is why I choose to belong to it. But our compassion is limited to each person’s willingness to express it and what you do does affects a piece of the whole picture. It makes you proud to have a good name, right? But how sad when people may report that a certain work is doing nothing to help anyone in need!
People with compassion are full of love and compassion is a fruit of that love. Choose today how you are going to live, showing mercy as God shows mercy, or being hard hearted? Consider this: Proverbs 21:13 13Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard. God will deal with each person by how they have dealt with those he has created, your fellow man. Jesus said Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
12. People without love & compassion have never had a repentance! I am convinced by the verses of today, that those who do not love and help others in need are still full of hate and this makes them guilty before God as being a murderer. 18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
Those who selfishly only take care of themselves and never show compassion will discover God is angry with them and they will have no part in heaven! If you have the doubt that you are not full of compassion, that you are cold hearted, and you really do not care if your brother or sister’s suffering, then come and pray and ask God to break and remake you.
In heaven there will only be those who have shown compassion which was motivated by their love for Jesus. The ones who have been rich and shared their riches will have rewards in heaven too if they have believed as Zacchaeus did. All the disciples had it, and every true authentic Christian will have testimonies of helping others too as a proof of their love for God, Jesus, and their neighbor! Now is our prayer time to ask the Lord for forgiveness if he is reminding you of sometime that you failed someone with a need. Or if the Lord has not converted your heart, then come and ask for Him to change it today!
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