Are you ready for graduation? What have you recently qualified for?
A friend wrote in his blog this week that while recently attending the Michigan graduation of his sons, the Pro-Life protesters outside the venue at times drowned out the speaker.1
Also this week J. Lee Grady wrote about attending his daughter’s graduation in Georgia a few years ago. The keynote speaker, a State Legislator with well known conservative Christian values launched into a “blistering tirade” about immigration policy blaming immigrants for dangers, drugs and disease”. 2 The tenor of the ceremony changed and people became uncomfortable and embarrassed. All the parents, graduates and well wishers, along with foreign nationals (parents) were forced to sit through this diatribe which was inappropriate rather than uplifting and inspirational as the event called for.
2 Corinthians 19-23 says, “Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized-whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ-but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” 3
People change from the inside out. If we want to see people transformed into, as Paul says, “a God-saved life”, we need to quit taking on the ways of the world. Its like Bible thumping, now means trying to thump people over the head with a Bible, as if they can be transformed by osmosis in that process. Does anyone want to change their life and become like the person beating them over the head (even if that is only figurative)? I don’t think so.
In fact, we may need to consider Paul’s admonition to not just talk about the “Message” but to be the “Message”.
The world already has plenty of hostility, quarreling, outbursts of anger, dissension, division. 4 We don’t like to be the recipient of these things, so why do we think they will have a positive impact on others? Galatians goes on to say, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 5
These are things that people must experience and see in our lives, if we are to have any real hope of “leading” them into a God-saved life. We cannot use the ways of the world to achieve spiritual transformation. Only the Spirit changes things for good for eternity.
My suggestion: Today deliberately speak and impart the fruits of the spirit to at least five people, plus everyone you live with. Even better, every time you speak, first deliberately chose one of the fruits of the spirit to demonstrate in your speaking. No talking about it, just doing it, being it.
In other words, stop talking about Christianity, and do it.
When I was young my Mother always reminded us as we went out the door that we needed to speak and behave in a certain way. The implication was that what we did and said reflected on our whole family.
Today, are you a good reflection of the God’s family?
Yes, I know that I’m preaching to the choir here. Someone please tell me why that seems necessary?
1. www.michaelhindes.com
2. J. Lee Grady, Fire in My Bones, May 5, 2010
3. The Message
4. Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Gal 5:20
5. Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Gal 5:22-23
