Friday, December
1, 2017
God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives. Therefore, anyone who refuses to live by
these rules is not disobeying human teaching but is rejecting God, who gives
his Holy Spirit to you. But we don’t
need to write to you about the importance of loving each other, for God himself
has taught you to love one another. Indeed,
you already show your love for all the believers throughout Macedonia. Even so, dear brothers and sisters, we urge
you to love them even more.
1
Thessalonians 4:7-10(NLT)
Paul wrote to encourage the church at Thessalonica. He knew their lives were already immersed in
serving Christ, but he felt an urgency to let them know it was time to blossom
even bigger in God’s Kingdom; it was time for them to step it up.
The apostle began with the rules. THE rules (10 commandments)
are where we all start off; you do
have to have a place of beginning! But
there is a time to put those rules behind us – not in the sense that they
disappear and become unimportant, or relics to be ignored. But, like anyone who recognizes God has a
prior claim on our life and all we are, Paul urges the disciples to go beyond
the mere rules…all the way to the spirit
of the law.
It’s said that Samuel Clemmens (whose pen name was Mark Twain) had a
potty mouth. The story is that his foul
language really tweaked his wife Olivia’s sense of decency. She
tried ceaselessly to get him to clean up his act, but all to no avail. The man was incorrigible. One day Mrs. Clemmens decided on a new shock and awe tactic to get
her husband to quit cussing; she gathered all the foul words together in a
rambling sentence, held her nose (so to speak) and let them fly from the other
room at the top of her voice.
Momentarily Samuel appeared at the door and said:
My dear, you would do well to
stop that; you have all the words, but none of the music!
Samuel Clemmens recognized that his wife was not a “fit” swearer; her
life was higher than that, and it was strange to hear it coming from her lips.
In just that way Paul urges believers to step-up our game when it comes
to the way we love. It’s not about the
rules, it’s about the music of loving.
For You
Today
I’ve
decided to put away the list of do’s and (especially) the don’ts; it’s time to step-up
and dance to the music of God’s love!
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