Life. He's been pretty clear that this life, His life, is a life of action. A positive response is necessary for a healthy relationship to exist. This is a two-way street. One aspect of action is listening. The old adage of having two ears and one mouth is convicting me to listen better and talk less! I am actually working on it. There are some very powerful scriptures that tell of the importance of listening. Deut. 30:19-20 talks of listening to God. Mark 9:7 describes God commanding us to listen to His Son, with an exclamation point! John 10:27 says His sheep listen to His voice. James 1:19 reminds us to be quick to listen and slow to speak. 1 Sam. 3:9 tells us how to be open and receptive to the Lord's calling.
And the greatest action is love. It's obvious I have alot of work to do in this area. But if I keep surrendering to Him, allowing His life to flow through me, I will be a strong enough man to love, even my...gulp...enemies. Crazy, I know. But that's how He rolls. He loves everyone perfectly. And we are to love others like we love ourselves? What's that all about? We would do well to find out what God thinks about us and discover how He loves us. I know what the devil tells us. He tries to convince us we are not worthy of love and that God is a bad, angry God, ready to smite us for being failures. Wrong! Maybe we can't love others because we can't love ourselves because we can't believe God can love us! Whew! Get over it and embrace grace. Do a "Trust Fall" into His awaiting arms. He won't let you down. He is strong enough to save even...me.
He gave me His Holy Spirit to make this miracle of loving possible. It's impossible for man to do it on his own. His Spirit helps us by revealing God's true character in scriptures. He is the Holy Ghost, nudging and leading, all the while transforming us and developing the life of Christ in us. It's a beautiful miracle only He can pull off.
Other aspects of action include obeying, serving, helping, praying, using gifts, hoping, and believing. Also, faith without works is dead (James 2: 26). And this faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of God (Rom. 10:17) One of my biggest challenges is described in what I call my Life Verses of Prov. 3:5-6, "Trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths". I'm convinced God gave me those verses to help me because He knew I would struggle in that area!
And speaking of "paths" in life, Jer. 6:16 says, "This is what the Lord says: 'Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, 'We will not walk in it'." Remember in Deuteronomy we talked about 'today I set before you life and death. Choose life.'? My friends, these paths we choose are life and death. In this wild world we live in today, the ancient paths are getting more ancient and outdated, unpopular in our culture. The good way is being overgrown with weeds of selfishness. I think what most people want is peace in their lives. They want peace now, and they want peace for eternity. Deep down, that's what we really want. Sheep are like that. That's why we can point to Jesus as the perfect Shepherd. He's the only Way we are going to live a life of peace. I know, without Him, I'm a complete mess. Oh, how many times have I said, "I will not walk in it"? Too many times, and I regret it. I'll never know what I missed by choosing my way. So, I want to add this Jeremiah verse to my collection and walk it out. I want the ancient path, the good way, to be real in my life.
