Scripture: Romans 12:14–21

What does loving someone look like when they've actually hurt you?

Paul begins with a challenging instruction: love must be sincere. Not outward politeness covering inward resentment, but genuine love expressed through practical action. Bless those who persecute you. Don't repay evil with evil. Don't seek revenge. If your enemy is hungry, feed them.

But Paul also gives an important qualification: "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."

Some relationships won't be reconciled. Some situations aren't safe. Reconciliation requires two willing people, while forgiveness and refusing retaliation are choices we can make before God. We are responsible for our own posture and actions; we can leave justice and the other person's response in God's hands.

The goal isn't simply to survive evil. Paul calls us to overcome evil with good.

In this episode:

• What Paul means when he says love must be sincere
• Why loving an enemy doesn't require manufacturing warm feelings
• The difference between forgiveness and reconciliation
• Why pursuing peace doesn't mean pretending a wrong never happened
• What "as far as it depends on you" means for difficult relationships
• How trusting God's justice frees us from retaliation
• Why good is the weapon Paul gives us for overcoming evil

Reflect: What are you holding onto that you could hand over to God? Think about a strained relationship. What part actually depends on you? Is there a step you need to take even if the other person never responds?

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: Matthew 5:43–48

Loving people who love us isn't particularly difficult. Jesus calls His followers to something far more radical: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Jesus isn't talking merely about people who annoy us, disagree with us, or live differently than we think they should. He was speaking to people who understood genuine oppression and persecution. Yet even there, He commands enemy love.

Why? Because that's what our Father is like.

God sends sun and rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike. Jesus describes enemy love as part of the family resemblance of God's children. And He never asks us to do something He wasn't willing to do Himself. Even while being crucified, Jesus prayed for the people responsible for putting Him there.

In this episode:

• What Jesus really means when He commands us to love our enemies
• Why enemy love isn't limited to tolerating difficult people
• How God's generosity toward the righteous and unrighteous reveals His character
• Why loving our enemies makes us look more like our Father
• Jesus' own example of enemy love from the cross
• How the Holy Spirit enables us to give love we cannot manufacture ourselves

Reflect: Is there a person or group you think of as an enemy—or someone who has hurt, opposed, or wronged you? Instead of beginning with how you feel about them, could you begin by simply praying for them today?

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: Luke 10:25–37

"Who is my neighbor?"

It's a familiar question, but Jesus' answer refuses to give us the comfortable boundaries we might prefer.

When a religious expert asks Jesus who qualifies as his neighbor, Luke tells us he's trying to justify himself. He isn't looking for a bigger circle of people to love. He's looking for the edge of the circle, the point at which his responsibility ends.

Instead of giving him a definition, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. The unlikely hero doesn't simply feel compassion. He comes near. He gives his time, resources, money, attention, and even changes his plans to care for a stranger who cannot repay him. Then Jesus changes the question from "Who is my neighbor?" to essentially, "Will you be a neighbor?"

In this episode:

• Why the expert in the law wanted to define the limits of "neighbor"
• The significance of a Samaritan becoming the hero of Jesus' story
• How biblical love requires more than good intentions
• Why presence and advocacy are part of loving people well
• The cost of allowing yourself to be interrupted
• How Jesus shifts our focus from identifying our neighbor to becoming one

Reflect: Where have you quietly drawn a line around the people you're willing to love? Of the things the Samaritan gave—his time, resources, money, and plans—which is hardest for you to give?

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: Romans 5:6–11

What does Christian love actually look like, and where does it begin?

As we continue the We Dream vision series, Lisa Scheffler introduces a week focused on Christ Fellowship's dream to see our neighbors loved and our enemies blessed. Before we can talk about how we love others, though, we have to remember where Christian love begins: with the love God first showed us.

Romans 5 doesn't describe us as people who had almost figured things out when Jesus came for us. Paul calls us powerless, ungodly, sinners, and even enemies of God. Yet while we were still in that condition, Christ died for us. God's love wasn't a response to our goodness. He made the first move.

Every act of Christian love flows downstream from that truth. Remembering how God loved us when we were His enemies changes how we see the neighbors and even the enemies He now calls us to love.

In this episode:

• What Christ Fellowship means by becoming "a better church before a bigger church"
• A practical definition of biblical love: being with someone, for someone, and helping them move toward Christlikeness
• Why love isn't simply an addition to the Christian life
• What Paul means when he describes humanity as ungodly
• Why remembering who we were apart from Christ matters
• How the cross becomes the starting point for loving other people

Reflect: Why is it important to remember who you were apart from Jesus? How should God's love toward you affect the way you love others?Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: Luke 6:43–45; Galatians 5:22–23 Runtime: ~5 min

Nobody has to talk a fig tree into producing figs. The fruit just tells you what the tree already is. We close out this week with Jesus turning from training to fruit — and the reminder that all our effort was never meant to manufacture what only God can grow.

In this episode:

• Jesus' picture of the fig tree: fruit isn't forced out by effort, it's evidence of what's already true underneath
• Why training doesn't manufacture fruit — it keeps us rooted near the source that actually grows it
• Paul's list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, and why love leads it — right back to where the week began
• The whole point of following rather than fandom: not admiring Jesus from a distance, but slowly becoming like Him

Reflection: What practice most reliably puts you close to Jesus — and is anything crowding it out lately? If you looked more like Him a year from now, what's the first thing the people closest to you would notice?

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: 1 Timothy 4:11–16 Runtime: ~5 min

Paul tells Timothy exactly what to train in — and it's not technique or strategy. It's speech, conduct, love, faith, purity. And the goal isn't arrival, it's visible progress. Today we look at why Paul refuses to let Timothy separate what he believes from how he lives, and why that charge lands on every one of us, not just pastors.

In this episode:

• Paul's list of what to train in — speech, conduct, love, faith, purity — with no mention of technique or strategy
• Why Paul asks for progress, not perfection, and what that means for how we should see our own growth
• How Paul's charge to Timothy to use his gifts and not neglect them applies to every believer, not just those with a pulpit
• Why Paul refuses to separate life and doctrine — truth and grace were never meant to be traded off against each other

Reflection: Which is easier for you — truth or grace — and why? Where is God gifting you, and how are you using it for the good of the people around you?

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: 1 Timothy 4:6–10; Matthew 11:28–30 Runtime: ~6 min

Patience, humility, sacrificial love — none of it comes automatically. Paul told a young pastor named Timothy to train himself to be godly, the same word used for an athlete's training. But there's one crucial difference between us and the athletes: we're not earning a prize by our own strength. We're working alongside a Savior who calls the whole thing easy — because He's the one pulling with us.

In this episode:

• Paul's charge to Timothy to "train yourself to be godly," borrowing the language of athletic discipline
• Why we can't simply wish our way into Christlikeness — obedience under pressure is built by what we practice ahead of time
• The key difference between spiritual training and athletic training: our hope rests in the living God, not in how the training is going
• Jesus' invitation to take His yoke — a well-fitting harness carried alongside Him, not instead of us

Reflection: If love is something we practice, what would practicing it look like this week in one specific relationship? When your spiritual efforts go badly, which do you actually put your hope in — your own effort, or God?

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: 1 John 4:16–21; Romans 12:1–2 Runtime: ~6 min

It's hard to follow someone you dread. A lot of us carry a quiet sense that God is mostly disappointed, keeping a tally somewhere. Today we see why that fear has no place in a relationship built on mercy — and what it looks like to offer God our whole lives in response, not just the parts we think of as spiritual.

In this episode:

• Why John can say believers "are like Jesus" in this world — not sinless perfection, but a new standing before God because of the cross
• How perfect love drives out the fear of judgment that keeps us at a distance from God
• Paul's call in Romans 12 to offer our bodies — our whole, ordinary lives — as a living sacrifice and act of true worship
• Why the order always matters: God's mercy comes first, and transformation follows from there, never the other way around

Reflection: Are there areas where a low-grade dread of God still shapes how you approach Him? What would it look like to come closer? Name one ordinary part of this week where offering it to God would actually change what you do.

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: 1 John 4:7–12 Runtime: ~9 min

Most of us are fans of something — a team, a singer, a show we could talk about for an hour. But fandom is admiring from a distance, and it's conditional. Following is different. It's walking in someone's steps and becoming like them. This week we're asking what it actually looks like to move from casual fan of Jesus to faithful follower — and it starts, before anything we do, with what He's already done.

In this episode:

• The vision behind the We Dream series, and this week's focus on becoming faithful followers rather than casual fans
• The difference between a fan (admiring from the stands) and a follower (walking in someone's steps and imitating their way)
• How 1 John reframes "God is love" as an action, not a feeling — proven by God sending His Son as the actual means of dealing with sin
• Why training, effort, and spiritual growth never earn us more of God's love — we already have all of it

Reflection: Where have you been measuring God's love for you by how you're doing, rather than by what He's already done? Who's one person in your life where loving them well would mean something specific — and maybe inconvenient — this week? Name it, then do it.

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.

Scripture: Hebrews 10:19–25 Runtime: ~5 min

All week we've watched the exiles chase one thing: getting near to God. The altar, the sacrifices, the temple foundation — all of it pointed toward something bigger. Today the writer of Hebrews names what that something is. Everything the altar pointed toward, Christ has become — and because of him, the invitation is simple: draw near.

In this episode:

• How Jesus becomes both the sacrifice and the great priest that the exiles' altar could only point toward
• Why authentic worship is "a sincere heart and full assurance of faith," not a performance
• How drawing near to God is meant to pull us toward each other — worship was never designed to stay private

Reflection: The exiles needed an altar, a priest, and a sacrifice to come near to God. What has it changed for you that Jesus is all three? Who's the one person you could spur on toward love and good deeds this week?

Hear the message for this week's devotional on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristFellowshipMcKinney

Get the written devotional at: https://cfhome.org/EGD

If you are in the North Dallas area and would like to join us for services each week, you can find all the information at https://cfhome.org.