'Click here for AUDIO
The charity I work for has a pool vehicle ... the Chaplaincy Landrover.
It's a great high-profile asset
It goes into places responding to rural people's crises - places that a little hatch back wouldn't go.
It carries a lot of kit for the Drive-In Church services we organise around the place and it flies the flag and draws attention to what we do ... because it is fairly heavily sign-written with details of all the stuff we get up to.
Of course, it carries details of the contact points where people can indirectly see what we're up to without direct communication being required (social media etc.) and also directly contact us when they want to do so (phone numbers, WhatsApp and email).
And yes, this truck is a focal point in the livestock markets with its awning and tables and chairs where people can sit, chew the fat and spin yarns.
The low profile asset
Now, I'm not the one driving the Landrover today and I'll be in Llandovery Mart in ... a Ford Fiesta! But it has a sun-visor sign that lets people know I'm around and that they can find me and have a chat if they'd like to. I just pull it down, and then they know.
The thing is, I drive much more sensitively in a sign-written vehicle than in the sort where the signage is clipped onto the back of a retractable sun-visor ... like the one I'll be driving today.
No ... I DON'T tend to go cutting people up at roundabouts or honking my horn aggressively at Mrs. Evans (a generic term) as she pootles along a 60 mph road at 35!
But in the sign-written vehicle I'm much more careful to smile and wave.
And that's pretty much the sort of sensitivity that underlies our Verse for the Day today ...
"And whatever you do,
whether in word or deed,
do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him."
Colossians 3:17
It's all about doing what it says 'on the tin'
That's pretty much a Biblical admonition to 'do what it says on the tin'!
'Whatever you do ... do it all' is a call for consistency across the board of your human life and interactions because as a known Christian (and there isn't really any other sort of Christian) your tin is already 'sign-written'.
Doing it in the Name of the Lord Jesus defines how you are to do it all ... do it all as a sign-written follower of Christ that neither He nor you would be ashamed to have your names painted on the side of.
'Wow! Hold on there! That sounds like an IMPOSSIBLY tall order!' (Says somebody).
'Live so Jesus wouldn't be ashamed of you?!'
Yes ... because how to live so Jesus wouldnt be ashamed of you is then further defined in that last line there:
"... giving thanks to God the Father through him."
Journeying from sadness to gladness
The Christian is a person that must aspire to and culture gratitude to God, sorrow at their own sin but immense gratitude to God for His unmerited and expensive (to Him) grace shown to His sinful people in the service and sacrifice of Christ.
The Christian (wo)man is a bad (wo)man who has been made a glad (wo)man because Jesus Christ gave His sinless life to pay the penalty of their sin ... freely, the opposite of what was deserved, in their place ... as He died on the Cross and to seal their eternal security by rising from the dead when the price of sin was paid and death was conquered.
We have done NOTHING to deserve this ... it's all God's free gift to us.
So it is the GLADNESS that proclaims the glory of our salvation that needs to be painted on the Christian's 'tin' ... not so much the aspiration to live a holy life which inevitably accompanies that.
The Point
If religion is a set of rules to us, then it becomes a drudgery and shows people a very laboured, miserable face and really persuades them not to have anyhing to do with it.
When our Christianity is properly understood to be an admission that we're not what we ought to be, that God has done an immensely gracious thing to turn us from a people who live as best they can while awaiting the just sentence on our sin into a people acquitted as our penalty has been paid by another, securing an eternal home in Glory by His sheer grace alone ... then that makes His people a humble and a thankful people and says much more truthful and gladsome things about our God ... and, of course, about what it's like to follow Him!
The Takeaway
Known Christians are always doing whatever they do 'under' the Name of Christ ... because they're CHRIST-ians, if you see what I mean?!
We never feel we're worthy or that we get it right all the time.
But what He seeks from us is honesty about our failures (which highlights our need of His grace) and gratitude that shows the goodness of His salvation.
Whatever we do in Word or deed we are SEEN to do it in the Name of the Lord Jesus.
Let's be sure we reflect all that's true about Him and about us in the gratitude that we show for His grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment