July 27, 2018
Be on your guard;
stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love. 1Cor
16:13-14
The life of faith
calls for all we have, to honor the One who gave all He had.
Some instructions may be easy to understand, but are not
always easy to do.
My uncle liked building model airplanes, and taught me how
to do it one summer when we had a vacation with him. He was patient and supportive as we navigated
through the instructions step-by-step, building the model he had purchased for
me that week. He gave me a simple
instruction: keep the cap on the cement glue so that we didn’t have an
accident. I did pretty well with that
instruction the first two nights, but then got lazy on the third night, and
eventually glue dripped out on his table and all over my hand. It was an easy rule to follow, but I got lazy
and made a mess. (Thank God he was kind
to me afterwards.)
In Paul’s final words of this letter to the Corinthian
church, he gives the church some simple instructions. They are common, something parents would tell
their kids and preachers would tell their churches. But though they are easy to understand, they
are often hard to do. Being on your guard is done well when we
talk with a high-profile personality, but ignored when talking in the presence
of an old friend. Standing firm in the faith happens better around fellow believers
than it does surrounded by influential unbelievers. Being
courageous & strong is much simpler when we’ve succeeded before, but
not as much when we’ve failed trying.
And doing everything in love
works much better around our favorite people than it does around people who
hurt us. Yet Paul didn’t make exceptions
or excuses, he called for those behaviors out of our devotion to Jesus. We don’t do the right things because people
have earned them, we do them because Jesus deserves them.
We worship and serve The Almighty God. This is not a god who competes or must earn
our ongoing devotion, He is the God who has no competition. His gifts of life and salvation are beyond
anything men ever deserved. And He
proved it by coming in the flesh to give His all for us. As such, God deserves ALL from us. The bar of devotion is not just high, it
calls for 100% complete. That includes
our behaviors toward His creation as well as our worship toward Him.
So be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous;
be strong. Do everything in love. Because that’s what Jesus did for you.
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