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On this New Year’s Eve, I want to thank all of you for taking time to read this blog. Throughout this year I have been encouraged by your comments and uplifted by your words. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:15-16: “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers (NIV).”
It is my prayer in the new year that you will grow in your faith in Christ. “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe (Eph. 1:17-19).”
Blessings to you.
#ThrowbackThursday — This post originally published May 22, 2010.
In today’s world, there’s no shortage of words. A recent article in Wired cites a University of California at San Diego study that reports Americans consume about 100,500 written words each day. Then there are the thousands of words we hear each day. Add to that the thousands of words we speak on a daily basis and it quickly becomes apparent that we are surrounded by a hurricane of information.
So what exactly are we saying to each other with all those words? What are you saying? Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ getting through or is it getting lost in the massive number of conversations swirling around us? If you are not careful, you’ll get caught up in trivial
Does Jesus dominate your daily conversation?debates that leave Jesus in the background. Paul cautioned Timothy about getting caught up in worldly discussions. “Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.” (2 Timothy 2:23)
Jesus cautioned his disciples in Mark 13:5 “Watch out so no one deceives you.” He goes on to warn them of many who will come to try to deceive with their words. When we focus on the Word of God each day – immersed in prayer and conversation with Him — we are filled with words that endure and stand up to the test of time. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (Mark 13:31 NIV).
Just as important as what you are saying, consider the words you are consuming each day. Are they nourishing your soul or are they distracting you from Christ? ”For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.” (1 John 2:16)
When we fill our lives with the Gospel, we anchor our lives in God’s wisdom. That makes it easier to displace the trivial words of this world with the enduring Words of God.
© 2010 CGThelen
#ThrowbackThursday — This post originally published April 16, 2010
The author of life created us with a purpose. He gives us the words in the Bible to define our life. Yet too often we choose the sinful words from this world to describe our existence. We build our life story around temporal things that lack meaning and purpose, settling for a life that’s disoriented and distant from Christ.
Galatians 5:16-26 reminds us that there are two sets of words to live by – those that describe the sinful nature and those of the Spirit. Verse 17 tells us “the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other so that “you do not do what you want to do.”(NIV) It’s a daily struggle to choose the right words to build a life story around Christ.
The Message translation of the Bible gives us a striking list of words that describes the sinful nature in verses 19-21: “repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.” You don’t have to look far to see these words in the world today and the kind of story they tell about a life caught up in the sinful nature.
If we live by the Spirit our lives will tell a different story, a story that reads as it was originally written before it was edited and revised according to the sinful nature. Verses 22-23 tell us the “fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” It’s interesting that verse 23 ends with “Against such things there is no law.” Laws abound around trying to control the sinful nature.
The story of a life lived with the Spirit will bear fruit that communicates Christ clearly to others. In the struggle to write our life story each day according to God’s design, let us carefully choose our words. Paul advises us in Gal. 5:24, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.”
© 2010 CGThelen
