Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father help us to consider carefully the sort of lives we are living. Father, you discipline and guide and comfort those you love. You love us! But too many times we would like you to love us on our terms, and quietly support our own goals and dreams for our lives. But Father, you are our Father, our Maker, our God! May your goals and desires take their rightful place above our own, until ours become yours. In the name of Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, may we live, and move, and breathe. Amen.
Your Morning Song: "You've Already Won" by Shane & Shane
Your Morning Scripture: Colossians 3:17
And whatever you do, in word or deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.
...
What does it look like to get this right? Should we shout "in the name of JESUS!" every time we say or do anything? Driving? Brushing our teeth? Eating cereal? Buying gas at the gas station? Eating out?
Please don't.
Consider this instead. Whatever you say and whatever you do, as a Christian, tells the world around you about God. We are God's kids. How we act reflects on our Heavenly Father. If we claim to be a Christian, then everything we say and do is in Jesus's name, whether we like it or not.
They will look at our marriages, our children, our angry or frustrated moments, how we win, how we lose, every inch of our lives. I've heard some really heartbreaking criticisms of God from unbelievers that aren't true about Him, but definitely fit our failing to live our lives according to His Will.
How you speak and act will tell others who God is. Have you done right by your Father in Heaven? Your Savior at His right hand? He, the Spirit, who lives within us? Or have we lied about who God is with our living and speaking?
At the very least it is a question worth asking ourselves. As representatives of our God, as His kids whose behavior tells others about His parenting, who are we saying God is?
Perhaps you're like me, and sometimes you act and speak by your own name, and not God's. Repent! Say sorry. And turn away from such poisonous, foolish sin!
As God's kids, our behavior, our attitudes, our words, our reactions, our choices, matter.
How you talk to the worker at the drive-thru matters.
How you drive on the road matters.
How you talk about other people to other people matters.
How you treat your spouse matters.
How you treat other people who cannot repay you matters.
Your facial expressions matter.
How you do the dishes matters.
Every word you speak, matters.
Everything you do, matters.
Because we are God's kids. And how we are who we are (His kids) tells the world who He is. And that matters. Do we have habits and patterns of self-serving sin in our lives that need to change? Are we hypocrites who don't feel guilty? Or are we imperfect people submitting our whole lives to the only perfect person, Jesus?
