Sincere Honor

Yesterday I realized what an amazing chapter Romans 12 is. It gives an amazing outline of how to live a righteous life and shows how the body of believers should interact with each other. There are a slew of wisdom-nuggets that you can tuck away in your back pocket for a rainy day of rebellion.

However, one verse in particular stuck out to me and that is Verse 10 "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves." The theme of honor has been a reoccurring theme in my life lately. Giving honor to others but desiring and seeking honor from God alone and not seeking after praise from other people. I read a in a book the other day that said "If our encouragement comes from people then they are the ones we are worshipping. If our encouragement comes from God alone, then He is the focus of our worship" I am becoming more and more secure in this idea of not really caring what other people think about me, but truly desiring to feel God's pleasure over me (more on that in a later post...maybe).

Even though we are supposed to seek after God's honor only, honoring one-another within the body is a theme that is repeated over and over through out the Bible. Honor your father and mother...Submit to and honor the authority over you... honor one another above yourselves...etc. etc. etc.

However, I feel like this value is is being lost on an independent generation of people who desire glory and fame for themselves. They love to have control of the reigns before they even know where the horse is supposed to go. They don't know how to honor those in leadership over them let alone how to honor some one on "the same level." This lack of honor builds up barriers of bitterness, self-righteousness, anger, jealousy and eventually division.

The sooner we learn to genuinely bless, sincerely honor, and extravagantly love the people around us the sooner we will realize that all of this...it's not even close to being about us.