Dave’s Monday Blast – July 12, 2021
My family loves to camp. We always drive north to our “favorite spots.” (Don’t ask where though as camping has become too competitive to risk anyone else knowing our good spots.) I will confess that we always head north and we often drive past Dingerville. Anybody know where this is? In that same general vicinity is a little Adventist School with a marquee on the road in front of the school. Every time we drive by there is a memorable little phrase posted. My favorite over the years is this: Love People and Use Things (This is Jesus’ Way). If you reversed the message it would read Love Things and Use People (This is the way of the secular world).
My experience is that using things to love people builds strong relational bridges; always the most effective tool to share Christ even within a culture that condemns us as opponents of the authenticity it demands. We must be as authentic as believers in Jesus as our opponents seek to be as secularists. The key to being authentically Christian, of course, is being authentically like Christ.
Paul said of Christians: “We have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). The Spirit of Christ lives in us as His temple (Romans 8:9: 1 Corinthians 3:16). But we must cooperate with the Spirit in thinking like Jesus: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
How do we do this so that we are naturally inclined to use things to demonstrate our love for people. Pastor Jim Denision comments: “Begin your day by meeting God in His Word. Ask Him to speak to you through Scripture, agreeing with J. I. Packer that the Bible is ‘God preaching.’ Memorize God’s Word regularly, then ask the Spirit to bring biblical truth to mind as you face the challenges and opportunities of your day. Pray for the strength to ‘obey God rather than men'” (Acts 5:29).
If you will say with the psalmist, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97), you will be able to testify, “Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me” (v. 98). I believe all INTENTIONAL men of God would agree with both the psalmist and the American Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson who noted that “a man is what he thinks about all day long.”
What or who will you think about today?
