Bringing the Heat, Bearing Up with Hope!

The Summit of Our Salvation

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

May 18, 2025

Bringing the Heat, Bearing Up with Hope!

Under the heading “let love be genuine” Paul ticks off a list of things that I believe help us to identify what genuine love looks like. We saw last week that real love hates evil and holds fast to good. It loves with a warm family affection.It sees and esteems the value in others. This morning let’s pick up at verse 11.

¹¹ Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rom. 12:11

Genuine love for the Christian means that serving the Lord. It’s hard to find an example in the Bible where serving God didn’t involve people. A biblical zeal for serving the Lord will lead us to love people. If zeal for God doesn’t lead us to love, serve, and care for people I would argue it’s the wrong kind of zeal for God.

At the age of 13, Simeon Stylites, after reading the Beatitudes developed such a zeal for God that he entered the monastery, but they soon asked him to leave because his zeal was so intense they said he was unsuited for any community life. Translation: his zeal for God was driving everybody crazy! So Simeon spent the next 36 years living on a platform built on a pillar fifty feet off the ground, completely separated from people.

Let love be genuine by serving the Lord. Serving the Lord doesn’t separate us from people it sends us to where people live. That’s what we see in Jesus’ life and ministry and the Lord calls us to follow in his footsteps.

So when Paul says don’t be slothful in zeal but fervent in spirit as we serve the Lord, he’s saying don’t serve the Lord half-heartedly. The Greek word for fervent means to boil. Boiling water is active water – heat moves it to action. Don’t let your heart be cold or lukewarm, keep your love and service for God boiling hot!

The Lord requires us to love and serve Him with our whole hearts, not half-heartedly. So turn up the heat, Paul says. This tells us that we’re not thermometers, we’re thermostats. Thermometers tell us the temperature but can’t do anything about it; thermostats change the temperature. God has given us the ability to turn the heat up in our hearts to love and serve God with more heat, more intensity.

Before we move on I think two points are important to make.

1. Chip Ingram makes the point that too often Christians give off more heat than light when discussing important issues or differences. It’s easy to think that fire rising up in us that wants to argue or cut someone down with our words is zeal for the Lord, but it’s probably not. It’s probably zeal for our pride. I’m talking from experience. Paul has instruction for us in 2 Tim. 2 for when we feel that heat of anger and arguing rising up:

²⁴ And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. ²⁵ Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, ²⁶ and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. 2 Tim. 2:24-26

Not quarrelsome, kind to everyone, opponents must be gently instructed. Just in case we think this is only referring to being gentle and kind to people who see eye to eye with us on almost everything but have a slight difference in some minor doctrinal area, no, Paul’s talking about people who oppose us, who don’t know the truth, have lost their senses, and are captive to the devil’s will. Gently instruct them in the hope that God will turn their hearts and lead them to the truth.

So Paul’s calling us to be hot in our humble service to the Lord, not slashing and burning those who disagree or oppose us.

2. Let’s admit honestly that all of us struggle with losing our zeal at times.The way to regain a warm desire to serve the Lord isn’t to focus on our temperature, it’s to focus on all that Christ has done for us. In view of God’s mercy… Meditate on His amazing grace towards you and me when our hearts are cooling off. Jesus has covered our sins with mercy. Jesus has saved us for eternity and nothing can pluck us from his hand. In fact, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. The deeper we know God’s love for us, the more we want to share His love for others…and that is serving the Lord.

CS Lewis famously said, it is easier to act our way into feeling than to feel our way into acting. As we look for opportunities to serve the Lord and step into those opportunities as we feel the Lord lead us, that can be an effective way of turning up the thermostat so that we become more fervent in our service of the Lord.

¹² Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 

These three go together. Hope is anticipation of something in the future, something not yet here. In Christ we have so much to look forward to, so much to hope for and rejoice about.

• Those who suffer with chronic disease can look forward to being completely healthy
• Those with physical or mental disabilities will be physically and mentally whole
• Those who have lost a believing loved one – a mother, father, son, daughter, friend – will find them again, never to lose them again. What a happy reunion that will be! What joy when a mom who hasn’t been able to hug her child for years is able to wrap her arms around him or her and hug tight.
• Those who lived this life never feeling like they fit in, will fit in. Will be accepted. Will be home.
• All of us who have lived this life throttled by sin – maybe not even realizing how much pride or selfishness or lust or anger or fear of man or selfish ambition was throttling our lives – will finally be free of sin. No more sin! We can’t even imagine what that will be like!
• Suffering will be no more. Sorrow and sighing will flee away.
• Christ has purchased us this unbreakable hope – we should rejoice in it!

It’s that hope that gives us patience in times of tribulation. The Greek word for patience is an interesting word. It means to bear up under the weight of heavy circumstances, but it also carries the meaning of remaining, not fleeing. Jesus said in Matt. 10:22 that his followers would be hated on account of his name, but the one who endures – hypomeinas – bears up, remains – to the end will be saved.

Having an indescribably awesome hope beating in our heart gives us patience to endure suffering and hardship now. Whatever it is, it won’t last forever. We won’t be under this weight forever.

Prayer helps us stay connected to God and receive His grace for whatever we’re facing, but it also is a release valve as we give that weight to God. Often when we pray to God about a situation, the situation doesn’t change right away – maybe it never does – but our hearts change. We receive strength to keep going, patience to remain under the weight and not lay it down by giving up on God. Prayer helps us abide in Christ so our souls feel the reality of the future hope we have in Christ which gives us patience to bear up under the weight.

I said I believe that this list of things Paul calls us to do helps us know what genuine love looks like, but how does this command help us love? Here’s an analogy that may help explain. If you’ve ever flown in a commercial airliner, you know that they always instruct what to do if the compartment loses oxygen. A mask will drop, but they will tell the parents of young children to make sure to put their mask on first, then put the mask on their children. Why? Because if mom and dad lose consciousness, they can’t do their children any good.

If we lose our hope, if we flee from Christ when things get hard, if we stop praying, it doesn’t stop with us, it ripples down to those we influence. The most loving thing we can do for others is to love Jesus. Jesus said apart from me you can do nothing. If we disconnect from Jesus, we cannot bear fruit for the kingdom on our own.

Maybe you’re under tremendous weight right now. Maybe it feels like life is pressing in on you. You feel stressed out by the demands of life. You’re discouraged about the present and afraid of the future. God wants to meet you right where you are today.

My mom told me about a 24/7 live cam that gives us a “birds eye” view of an eagles nest in Bear Valley, California. As I was working on this message I happened to put it on my phone and every now and then I’d watch as the two eaglets Sunny and Gizmo are flapping their wings getting ready to fly. And it made me think of Isa. 40:31

those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Isa 40:31

As we hope in the Lord – some translations say “wait on the Lord” – God renews our strength and enables us to fly above the storms of life and see beyond an earth-bound perspective to see this life from an eternal perspective.

So wait on the Lord and give Him that weight you’re carrying.