The Courage To Care Under Fire

A president mocked as a “village clown” kept his door open to the weary and the unknown. That image launches us into a candid, practical journey through brotherly love—the kind of deliberate, disciplined affection that turns a crowd into a family and keeps faith from going cold. We weave Lincoln’s surprising hospitality with vivid moments from the life of Jesus, where compassion interrupts the schedule: a quiet talk at a well, a pause for a trembling hand, a touch no one else would risk. Then we land in 2 Peter 1, where brotherly love sits in a serious list of soul-building virtues and is treated as essential, not optional.

We talk about why affection doesn’t appear by accident and how the local church becomes the laboratory for it. Think family language from Paul—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters—and the friction that comes with it. Instead of waiting to feel close, we act like kin because we are kin in Christ: same Savior, Spirit, and mission. From there, we get specific about practice: outdo one another in honor, show up with a cheering spirit, and trade self-promotion for presence. You’ll hear a college student’s story of being welcomed back to faith and why that front-door smile mattered more than anyone realized.

To make this real, we offer three handles: practice care one act at a time, cultivate love by the Spirit over time, and make small deposits of grace daily. Even small gestures—remembered names, shared coffee, a patient ear—become the oil that keeps a church’s moving parts from grinding. We close with a story about roses on a doorstep and an unhurried hour that no one expected, a picture of how power can stoop to serve. Ready to try it this week? Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs encouragement, and tell us the one person you’ll choose to cheer on today.

Transcript

Lincoln Under Relentless Criticism

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Well, he served as president of the United States, but as soon as he was elected, he faced a national criticism, rather vicious attacks by the media and his political opponents. Not only his policies, but his appearance was mocked, ridiculed. One news article wrote that his appearance was grotesque, his manners uncouth, his voice harsh, and his grammar worse. After his election, the Chicago Times wrote, and I quote, he has no more capacity for statesmanship than a monkey. We are now governed by the village clown. Over time, he would be accused of trying to destroy the Constitution, to trample on the liberties of U.S. citizens, starting a war to advance his own political ambition and more. In newspapers across the country, every day, he was referred to with names like butcher, imbecile, or a dictator drunk with power. One newspaper concluded Abraham Lincoln is the author of all our suffering. Most historians agree today that Lincoln was the most criticized president in American history, attacked by the world, never a moment of privacy, daily mocked, openly called names like monster, baboon, tyrant. He would receive hundreds of death threats during his presidency. And six weeks into his second term, one of them became reality. When Lincoln and his wife arrived at Ford's theater on the night of April 14, 1865, to watch a play, the last words he whispered to her before the assassin's bullet found its mark were these. Nearly everyone kept their distance from him. But if you thought Lincoln responded in the same manner that he lashed back, or that he avoided people, or that he, you know, sort of retreated in solitude and resentment, you would be wrong. His wife, Mary, was mystified and sometimes even appalled by his openness with people and his care. She once remarked to Noah Brooks, a newspaper editor, this statement, and I quote, I sometimes wonder if he knows he is the president. He will see anyone. Office seekers, household servants, washer women, mothers of sons lost in battle, the more ragged they are, the longer he will sit with them and listen. Lincoln is demonstrating a quality of character that we're about to dive into that we as believers are to demonstrate. Now, before I take you there, by using Lincoln as an example of this, rather than the Lord, I can just hear my critics saying, I don't have any critics, which is wonderful, but I can sort of hear them saying that I have aimed too low, that I should have used the Lord, who demonstrated it perfectly. And that would be true. I thought as I worked through this supplement of Jesus in John 4, where he met with that Samaritan woman, his request was for a cup of water. His disciples returned from the village to find him talking to a woman, which was rather surprising. That went against cultural norms. But that he would be talking to a Samaritan woman, that was shocking. Yet there he was, turning a cup of water into a conversation about her thirst, her need. I thought about the Lord healing a politician's son who was miles away geographically. Just a word, and that boy was healed. And yet, I also thought about the time where he stopped everything, and he spent some time with an elderly woman who'd risked everything to touch his garment. Or the time he stopped, you know, the circus, and he reached out and he touched a leper. You touch a politician's son, not a leper. As he healed him. Yes, he responded with mercy and compassion. But his compassion and concern for others, well, we're tempted to think that's just something the Son of God does. Yay for Jesus. We can never pull it off. I think our problem could be that we are quick to assume that since we're not Jesus, we get a free path, which is why I use Lincoln. We can defend our cold shoulder attitude toward people we don't know, or people who are not like us, or people who don't like us. At some point, we give ourselves permission to just sort of retreat in resentment and say, well, that's enough from you. Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, would disagree. And with that, we arrive at number six in the seven-fold list of supplements. They guarantee us, Peter writes, a fruitful and effective life, meaningful life. If you're new, we're in 2 Peter chapter 1. Your Bible's automatically open there now. Let's refresh our memory. Let's go back, especially for those who are new, to verse 5. Here's where he starts. He says, For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness. Here it is, number six, and godliness with brotherly affection. Your translation might read brotherly love. It's one word, a compound word in the original language. It begins with the verb phalao, to love with warm affection, and combines it with adelphos, which is the word for brother. Brotherly love. It refers to treating other people as if they were members of your family. And that's where Peter is going to take us. In fact, several times in the New Testament, the believers referred to as a member of the family of God. In fact, Paul told young pastor Timothy over in that first letter, chapter 5, he said, Timothy, I want you to treat older men as your father. I want you to treat older women as your mother. I want you to treat younger men as your brother, and younger women as your sister in all purity. One New Testament scholar writes that this supplement doesn't permit any Christian to live a solitary life. Christianity is not a life of solitude, it's a life of community. This is no coincidence in the mind of God for the development of the believer together in community. We are to demonstrate warm affection to those who happen to be our spiritual relatives in the family of God. Brotherly love is how you treat then your relatives, and you got a bigger family than you knew. You're reminded how big it is today. Now remember, Peter's telling Christians to diligently pursue adding this supplement to their lives, which reminds us this is not going to happen automatically. This isn't going to happen naturally any more than growing up in a household of brothers and sisters. Maybe you did, I did. I grew up with three brothers who were impossible to get along with until I went to college. Got better after that. Well, family life isn't an easy life. You can't even decide on where to go for lunch after church. The family of God is not any easier. Imagine a thousand brothers. Imagine a thousand sisters. It just got two thousand times harder. You probably heard that little poem that says it so well, to dwell in heaven with saints we love, that will indeed be glory. But to dwell below with saints we know, well, that's another story. In his commentary on 2 Peter, same Gordon added here, there are some believers with whom you hit it off, and some you just want to hit. I didn't say that. He did. But you get the point. Our friend is, our world is no friend to developing this characteristic. We live in a world where success means you are less interested in others, you are less involved in the lives of others, you are less available to others. Our generation emphasizes personal space, personal promotion, personal ambition, personal trainers. The list goes on. The first question people ask in our world today is how will that affect me? How will that make me feel? How will that be good for me? This runs counter to this supplement. Brotherly love asks the question: how will this affect you? How will this make you feel? How will this be good for you? Brotherly love encompasses the life of the local church. It oils the gears, the machinery of so many moving parts. So they run more smoothly. When we consider each other more important than ourselves. Philippians chapter 2 and verse 3. That's brotherly love. Now, if you track this word through the New Testament, you might be surprised it only appears five times in all. One of them is in Romans chapter 12 in Paul's letter to that church, where he writes in verse 10, be warmly affectionate with one another in brotherly love. Now the Apostle Paul is specifically referring to the local church as members of the same family, the same body. Over to the Corinthian church, Paul is going to use the metaphor actually of a human body. A local church is like a human body. You got hands and feet and eyes and a mouth and nose. And everybody fits in that body in order for the body to move forward. We're all different, but somehow by the Spirit of God and our commitment to this unified word, this doctrinal truth, we fit together. Even though we're very different. In our, I couldn't help but think of our most recent membership class, we call it the greenhouse, where we grow together, those early stages. We finished it just two weeks ago, and we had individuals whose native tongues in this class were Greek, Afrikan, Romanian, Telugu, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish. Of course, English. We have people joining our church in this class from foreign countries, Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Ghana, India, China, and Fuque Varina. We are brothers and sisters by inclusion in the family of God through faith in Christ. We have the same Savior, we have the same Heavenly Father, we have the same indwelling Holy Spirit, we have the same salvation, we have the same book, we have the same new nature, we have the same inheritance, we have the same profession of faith through baptism, we have the same family name, Christian, we have the same Great Commission, and we have the same final destination. And on the foundation of all of that is built then this call, this urgency, he says, with all diligence now, because of that, pursue, add to your life brotherly love. According to the implication of Peter's list, it's not going to be easy. That's why he says, give it all you've got, with all diligence. That's because we are diverse in our backgrounds, ethnicities, educations, histories, interests, even tastes. You who come from South America, you like cilantra on everything. I want sugar on everything. You're from the north, you drink your tea bitter, like the region you left. Cold. No, no, no, no, no. Here, you boil it in with it. Right? That's biblical. You boil it. It starts with B. If you moved here from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Anyone here from Philadelphia? One person. There's another one over there. Are you not getting along? You probably know. I mean, now that you're you're you're here, you're you're not encouraged to cheer on the fillies or the eagles. You're you're, I mean, you're pressured now. You got UNC, Duke, and you've got NC State. You've never had so much Christian pressure on you. Duke and UNC, you know, have the same color, blue is their primary color. You've probably been told, you know, you need to choose your blue. Some of you have chosen red because you're spiritually minded, Frenzy State. Those schools are within 30 minutes of each other, but let me tell you, there's no such thing as brotherly love between them. I had a man come up to me some time ago and he said, Pastor, you need to learn this poem. I thought he was going to give me something from the Bible. But he said it goes like this. Oh, you can't get to heaven in a red canoe because God's favorite color is Carolina blue. He's attending another church now. That's interesting that Paul is using the word, and that's why it came to my mind because he's using it almost as if he's asking us to start cheering for each other, like we're on the same team. Here's the paragraph. He says, Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. What does that look like? Give preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. He sounds like he's on a cheering squad with a megaphone in his hand, saying, cheer and encourage each other along. Several years ago, in the same thought, ESPN ran an article that featured the enthusiasm of college students who were preparing for a big basketball game. One of the schools handed students something called a cheer sheet to keep them on the same track. Here's what it said. ESPN reported it. This is the game you've been waiting for. Give everything you've got. No excuses. Now focus on our team. Let's bring our team up rather than put the other team down. Now, especially coming out of timeouts, we need to be incredibly loud. During our opponent's free throws in the second half, forget the novelty stuff. Just be unbelievably loud. This is a huge game. Stay in the bleachers, but go nuts. How's that for a church motto? Can you imagine if we showed up today with an attitude that we're going to cheer each other along like that? Have you ever thought about the fact that one of the reasons we actually gather is for that reason? Don't forsake the assembly of yourselves, as some already have. They're not here. But instead stir one another up, encourage one another unto love and good deeds as you see the day approaching. Cheer each other along. Have you ever thought about the fact that the reason you showed up in the mind of God to walk that hallway, to come through that door, to serve in that ministry, to sit here, to stand and sing next to that individual you may not know was to cheer them on. Encourage them. It may be the only word of encouragement they've gotten all week. They've come in here bruised. You're the cheerleader to cheer them on. This is brotherly love. The word appears again in Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church. He writes in chapter 4 and verse 9. Now, concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. But we urge you, do this more and more. Sounds like Peter, doesn't it? Add this supplement, make sure it's yours, and that it is increasing. In other words, deepen the bond of brotherly love, which means you're looking for new ways to demonstrate it. By the way, according to the New Testament, this kind of love is one of the greatest attractions of Christianity to the world. And the most distinctive. Because the world out there is living for number one. They're scraping and clawing and pushing their way up to the next rung of the ladder. It's all about their personal ambition, their personal success. And then they meet you. Somebody who actually cares about them. They meet Christians in the assembly. They attend a church service. And they can sense this. They can feel it. They don't have a word for it. Even though we don't know everyone in here, we don't know everything about anyone in here. In fact, we only know a few things about some people in here. There is this kinship. It's not natural. It's mystifying. It is supernatural. Minutius Felix was a Roman lawyer living within the first two decades of the church being created. And he made this observation about Christians. He wrote, they love each other even without being acquainted with each other. They hardly know each other. You found that to be true, haven't you? You're flying on a plane, on a bus, at work, you find out that other person's a Christian, and immediately, kinship. It's like you leap over everything into this brotherly love. One author writes that brotherly love is not a facade. It's not pretending. It bears one another's burdens, accepts difficult ministry duties, makes room for other opinions and ideas. It shares with others their joys and pains of life. Brotherly love does not happen by feeling, it happens by deciding. Let me make three observations from the passages where this word appears. First, brotherly love is not pretending to care, it is practicing care one act at a time. One of the individuals, a college student, wrote her testimony. I have the privilege of reading everyone's testimony and then meeting with them individually. It happens to be a highlight of my ministry. Let me share a paragraph with you. I haven't asked her for permission. I'll leave her name out. But here's what she wrote. A few years ago, my family decided to try out a new church. And that's when we found the shepherd's church. And this is where the good shepherd would ultimately bring back someone like me who had turned away. I wasn't happy with this new decision because at the time I pictured believers as judgmental and critical of people like me. But as soon as I walked through the doors, the people at the welcome desks pulled me in and even started showing me around. I remember wondering what it was about them that made them so happy. I even remember wondering how much they were being paid to pretend they were happy. There was just something about them that was different. She goes on to say how the Lord reached her heart. She would go on to be baptized in her profession of faith. And by the way, she now serves in the welcome ministry. Now there are people probably wondering how much she gets paid to be so nice. This is brotherly love. Secondly, brotherly love is not a natural acquisition, it is a supernatural cultivation. One decision at a time. He's nothing but a warm, affectionate man. Well, you are new to the faith and new to the word of God. You track his life back through what we're given in Scripture, and no one was more eager to be first in line. No one was more eager to let everybody know he was the leader, he was the spokesman, his idea mattered. Lord, you can forget about all those other guys. They're nothing compared to me. That's Peter, right? Now, make sure with all diligence you add this supplement to your life. It's as if Peter says, and man, did I ever have to work at it? Brotherly love. Third, brotherly love is not necessarily great sacrifices, it is simple deposits of grace in others. One gift at a time. In our world today, the more important you are, the less people would ever expect you to stop and talk to someone. To be kind to that clerk, the bank teller, the waitress. People whom the world would never consider anything other than being on the planet to serve us. It's remarkable to our world when someone reverses that selfish logic. I want to close with an illustration of another leader from the past, Ronald Reagan. If you're as old as I am, you remember how he was vilified as well in the press. I think that's their job, really, but he was castigated as an evil man. He was at one point in time the governor of California, and then from there he became the president. His reputation increased only after he died. He received as governor a letter from a soldier serving in Vietnam. The soldier's wife and two little children lived in a nearby county, Orangevale, near where Reagan lived. He wrote Reagan telling him about his life as a soldier and what he was doing in his service. He told Reagan that his anniversary, wedding anniversary, was approaching and that he'd sent his wife a card and wondered if she would ever get it. He talked about how he loved his wife and children. He apologized for making a bold request, but he asked that if Reagan had any time, to just make a quick phone call and see if she was okay and if she got the card. Pass along his love for her. Reagan never wrote that soldier back. Instead, on anniversary day, he left his office early, picked up a dozen roses, and knocked on the door of that soldier's wife's home. She opened the door, of course, was shocked. He gave her the flowers, said they were from her husband. Did she get the card? She invited him in. And for an unhurried hour, the author writes, he sipped a cup of coffee and talked to her about her children, her life. You know, a phone call from the governor would have been amazing. But flowers, a visit, unforgettable gifts that surprise us all. If he could do that, how much more should we, as followers of Christ, look for ways to show the love of God to our relatives? Look around. Look around at your relatives. I give you permission to stare. Look around. Look around. Do you know them? Have you met them? Have you said hello to them? Here's your chance in just a moment before you scurry out. Meet them. Maybe ask them out to lunch after church. If you're a single guy, here's your chance. Peter writes, let's give all diligence to showing each other, and the world is watching, this undeniable quality, this unique disposition. Let's show them. Let's show each other. Brotherly. Love. Father, there are passages that quickly get under our skin and challenge us. We arrived here with our own set of problems and challenges and difficulties. And we often arrive saying, Lord, this is what I need. This is what I need. And we forget that we are here for each other. So demonstrate through us what yes you did perfectly. Demonstrate. You call us Lord.