Take The Auto-Pilot Off

Receiving six inches of rain in the period of three or four days is not fun.  A creek is running through a normally dry ditch that sits in front of my house.  The Little River has not been so little for the last little bit.  Road have been blocked, washed out or even fallen completely off of a mountain.  Life has not been normal.

Danger is everywhere, so you have to be alert.   You have to adjust your life a little.  You may leave a  bit early.  You take a different route to where you’re headed.  Your senses are heightened to imminent threats.  You have to be a bit more careful.

That lasts for a little while and then life resumes back to normal.  I realized that on my drive into work after things had settled down a bit.  I was back on auto-pilot and turned down a road I normally take.  I was jarred back awake when I saw the warning barrels.  The road ahead was still flooded.  I asked Jan, “What was I doing?”  Obviously, I was not as concerned about the potential dangers of my trip.

Life can be like that for us, can’t it?  We cruise along on auto-pilot.  We’re not aware of the danger around us.  If you don’t get what I’m talking about, I’ve moved on from the flooding in East Tennessee last week.

I’m talking about our spiritual lives.

We don’t stay alert to the threats around us.  We are content to just sleep walk through life.  We don’t think about the fact that the enemy is a roaring lion seeking to devour us.

Sometimes we need to run into an orange barrel to wake us up.  To jar us out of our sleep.  To make us alert to what is going on.

We need to take it off of auto-pilot.

Do you ever realized that you need to take the auto-pilot off?

The Enemy Of Godly Is……

We who follow Christ and want a Godly life have an enemy.  I’m not talking about our enemy who roams around like a roaring lion wanting to devour us.

I’m talking about and impersonal enemy. One that we face and succumb to daily, if not hourly or by the minute.

The enemy of Godly is……good.

We have been told all of our lives to be good.  We have been trained to be good.  We have been told this by our parents.  Our churches.  Our teachers.  All with great intentions.

The problem is that Good, instead of Godly, becomes our focus.

We grow up to be good neighbors.  We grow up to be good church members.  We grow up to be good parents.

Guess what?

It isn’t good enough.

We can’t be that good.

We need to grow to be Godly.

We need to strive to be Christlike.

We need to learn to walk in the Spirit.

Good is the enemy of these.

Why?

Good strives to just be good enough.  Good wants to be comfortable.  Good is not offensive.

Being Godly is none of these things.  Being Godly does not allow complacency.

Being Christlike does not allow one to settle in.

Being of the Spirit pushes you forward.

Good is the enemy of Godly.

Do you struggle between Good and Godly?

140 Words (more or less) About One Word

It’s Twitterific Thursday where I write about a subject in 140 words, more or less.

One Word

One word.

That’s all you need.

One word.

That’s all you need to drive and motivate you.

One word.

For the Lord your God.

One word.

For your neighbor.

One word.

For your enemy.

One word.

For the world to know you are His disciples

One word.

For husbands to do toward their wives as Christ does for the Church.

One word.

That dominates our songs.

One word.

That dominates our books.

One word.

The Beatles said it was all you need.

One word.

I Must Love

I have found out something interesting during the past week.  I have an enemy.  I won’t go into the details, but someone actually tried to cause me personal harm that would have affected my life greatly if they had succeeded.  I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I don’t think most of expect to be attacked on a daily basis.  I’ve gone through several stages of emotion over the past few days and I’m not completely where I want to be yet regarding this.  Hopefully I will get there completely soon.

One of the things that has helped is this blog post from Desiring God.  It discusses how enemies are something that we will never have in Heaven.  So, if we are going to love our enemies, we must take the opportunity to do so now.  But why should we love our enemies?  I know most people would say, “Because Jesus said so”, and that’s fine.  That’s good enough for me too.  But I also want to bet to the heart of why.

I’ve been studying 1 John lately, and one of the main themes is that love for fellow believers is a mark of a true follower of Christ.  That shouldn’t surprise us.  Everyone understands that.  We learn in the story of the Good Samaritan who our neighbor is and that we should love our neighbor.  We understand that.  But why should we love our enemy?

Simply speaking, without me doing a full development of it, without Christ we are all enemies of God.  We might not realize it.  We might not believe it, but we are.  And what did God do for His enemies? He loved them.  He loved them so much that He sent His son to die for them.  He suffered for them.  He paid the debt for their salvation.

So, where does that leave me?  If God will do that for His enemies, what choice do I have?  I have to love them, don’t I .  God is love.  So, since He loved me, who was once His enemy, I love my brother, my neighbor and especially my enemy.  Simply said, I must love.

Do you have an enemy?  Do you love them?