‘You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance’ (v10) 2 Timothy 3:10–17
We recently had friends around with their five children, the youngest just one-year-old. As we sat around the room, we had fun adopting the same pose and watching how the baby would pause, look at us and then seek to copy our action; for example, all sitting with our arms in the air.
Paul is unafraid to invite those Christians who knew of and observed his life to copy it. He himself was confident that he was living the life of God as Jesus had shown those first disciples.
How confident are we that our daily life, both actions and reactions, reveal God to a watching world? We often use the phrase, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’, one that first appeared in John Selden’s Table-Talk (c. 1654) describing preachers! It echoes a warning James includes in his letter (James 3:1).
It’s important that we look to find people who exemplify how God’s Word is to be expressed through our lives. There’s always a danger we can learn a lot and use it to create our own private, personal faith, which, whilst it might encourage us, is of no real value in God’s mission to take the gospel to the ends of the earth for everyone’s benefit. We have each received everything freely from God, so we are to give freely as well (Matt. 10:8)
SCRIPTURE TO CONSIDER: Psa. 94:12–19; Isa. 40:12–31; 41:8–13; John 14:1–21.
AN ACTION TO TAKE: Consider your life, in both your external actions and your internal reactions? Does it reflect the teaching of Jesus? What might you do to improve?
A PRAYER TO MAKE: ‘Lord, help me to live a life illustrating the love of Jesus every day. Amen.’
Photo by Cade Martin. Dawn Arlotta. USCDCP on Pixnio
