Character - Being Conformed to His Image - A Physicial for the Christian Soul
Do you embody the fruit of the Spirit and flee sin?
If a maturing Christian loves God with all of his/her heart, mind, soul and strength his/her desires would become God’s desires. God says, “You shall be holy for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). He wants His people’s behavior and attitudes to mirror His. For example, the Bible tells us that God is a patient God (1 Peter 3:20) and the Bible tells us to be patient as well (Colossians 3:12). He wants His attributes of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, (Galatians 5:22-23) and truth to rub off on us to fulfill us and glorify Him.
The leader of a Bible Study I attend told us that a friend of his who knows quite a few billionaires told him that many of those billionaires are the unhappiest people he knows.
There are a large number of people who believe money will bring happiness. They think that if they just had enough money, they would be happy. But an interesting thing happens along the way to earning enough money…many of them discover that they can never earn enough to keep up with their desires. As their income grows, so do their desires.
The Bible claims that those who love money will never be satisfied loving money. (Ecclessiastes 5:10) This is because money is unable to fill the “satisfaction” void. It was never designed for that purpose.
To be clear, the Bible is not anti-money for there are many examples of very wealthy, God loving people in the Bible. Abraham, Solomon, Job are three examples.
This is the very definition of mercy. As we draw closer to God and he pours more of himself into us, there will come a point when we start reflecting many of God's attributes, including his mercy. As we see how undeserving we are in times of great need and how God meets where we are, we experience his mercy.
Some get a sense of mercy when they throw themselves at the mercy of the court. They have been convicted of a crime, know that they are undeserving of escaping punishment, and are in great need of relief. Before the judge, they plead with him to reduce or waive the sentence. They are at the judge's mercy.
Likewise, a child is at his/her parent's mercy when they get caught red handed doing something that they are not suppose to do, then the child pleads and cajoles begging for the parent's mercy.
A couple days ago one of our children's classmates looked at me and asked, "Are you Samuel's father?" I said yes then Samuel happened to come up and stand next to me. His classmate looked at both of us and said that he knew that I was Samuel's father because we looked alike.
That got me to thinking about my father. My younger brothers and I walk the same as he did. If all four of us were in a crowd and you were walking behind us, you would think that we were all related because we all walk the same way … the same cadence, the same posture, the same stride, everything is the same.
We reflected my father’s image as Samuel reflects my image. This is the case with nearly everyone. We reflect looks, mannerisms, emotions, behavior and the like of those who bore and reared us.
The Bible tells us that mankind was created in the likeness and image of God (Genesis 1:26), our Heavenly Father. So what does that mean?
We took our boys to Disneyland for three days last week during their fall break. It was my first time. During the three days there and walking through thousands upon thousands of people, I only saw one heated argument and two kids throwing fits … ours was one of them. Simply amazing.
That got me to thinking, why were thousands of people so relaxed and well behaved … was it Disney or the people? Well, as I looked around there was a healthy cross section of people … rich, poor, white, Hispanic, Asian, black, male, female, young, old and everything in between were walking around being courteous and many had smiles on their faces.
When you think of faithfulness what comes to mind? The first thing that comes to my mind are dogs. They believe you, remain loyal to you in your darkest hour, trust you, love you no matter what, honor you, and the are always there. They never ever think of leaving your side despite the times you not as faithful or loving to them. These are the qualities I admire because I am not like that most of the time. It seems to me that this unwavering faithfulness causes us to fall in love with them.
They are a great earthly example of the way that God is faithful to us. God loves us, remains loyal in our darkest hour, honors and never leaves us despite not being as faithful to him. As we struggle with what it means to be faithful, let us remind ourselves the six keys to faithfulness:
About Character
reak. It was my first time. During the three days there and walking through thousands upon thousands of people, I only saw one heated argument and two kids throwing fits … ours was one of them. Simply amazing.