Hello, my ‘Walking with Jesus” friends as we begin another new week together,
When you look back over your life, I wonder how many different jobs you’ve had or how many different places you’ve lived? If you have trusted Jesus Christ to be your Savior, I wonder what significant changes you’ve made in your life so your lifestyle would be honoring to God? I have a number of friends who felt major changes were needed in their life as they entrusted their lives to Jesus, in some cases even changing their vocation or moving to a new place to live! But today let’s consider the apostle Paul says something quite radical about this!
Paul is writing his first letter to his friends, the Christians in the Greek city of Corinth, in the mid first century, and in chapter 7 Paul says this: “Each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God called them… Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them… Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.” (1 Cor. 7:17-24) Now what do you suppose Paul is talking about here?
When a person becomes a Christian, what should change in their life? Yes, this is a continuation of Paul’s instructions to married couples who were finding themselves now in marriages where one person had recently become a follower of Jesus, but the other spouse remained as they both had been, disinterested in Jesus. We understand the tensions, we see them all around us in many couples today, don’t we? Evidently word had come to Paul that some were bailing out on their marriage covenant and seeking divorces because one of the spouses had become a Christian.
In some other cases, evidently some employers, who had become followers of Jesus, were thinking of terminating their non-Christian employees so they could employ only Christians, and some employees were thinking of quitting their jobs so they could go work for a Christian boss. So, can you see my friends that Paul’s instructions cover a wide range of situations?
I think Paul was issuing a challenge we all should consider carefully and it’s this: God strategically places His people in living locations, employment situations, friends and extended family networks, for the purpose of: God’s people being light in the darkness; bringing the hope of Jesus into discouraging and desperate situations; and being the ‘salt’, which retards the decay taking place in every society! What do you think about that?
So, let’s ponder for a moment WHERE you live and your neighborhood. Consider WHERE you work and your coworkers, boss or employees. Consider WHERE you shop or do other personal business. Consider your network of FRIENDS and extended FAMILY. Consider WHERE you play, your hobbies, your fun times. Now, consider that God loves EVERY person in each of those places and longs for ALL of those people to find freedom in Jesus and experience God’s great work in their lives. (2 Peter 3:9)
Looking at our lives that way, can you begin to see how spiritually strategic you and I might be IF we have trusted Jesus to be our Savior and we are pursuing an ever-growing relationship with God? Life looks quite different when we look at our lives through those lenses, from that perspective, doesn’t it? Positioned by God for Strategic Spiritual Impact! Wow!
So, my friends, what would it take for you and me to view ourselves in this way? When we awaken from our night’s sleep each morning, what strategic lifestyle PLAN would be important for us to live IF we were going to live each day “Positioned by God for Strategic Spiritual Impact”? May I give us three specific action steps which might change your life and mine?
1. I must begin my day, every day, seeking FRESH guidance from God, my heavenly Father, my Commander in Chief, if I’m going to live that day for Strategic Spiritual Impact.
I wonder how you do that? I do it with God’s Word the Bible in my hand, asking God to speak to me through His Word with specific God truth that will help me stay focused on Him that day.
2. I must reevaluate my priorities and my values, every day, to be sure they are not out of alignment with God’s values & priorities for me that day!
I must be willing to discern that the Holy Spirit of God may show me that I have drifted, and am out of alignment with God, and therefore actually living to some degree CONTRARY to what God is trying to do in my world.
3. I must continually refine my ability to discern when the Holy Spirit is speaking to me, guiding me, warning me, correcting me, in real time… as life is happening all around me, sometimes at very fast speed and in a noisy world where it can be hard to even hear myself think.
Now my friends, as we begin a new week together, I assume some of you don’t particularly like your job or your neighborhood. Some of you may actually be in some level of disagreement or conflict with co-workers or neighbors or extended family members or even friends with whom you’ve had a quarrel recently. We have two natural human tendencies… fight or flight! Run away and try to find peace far from that which is causing us pain OR rise up and rally our courage and engage the battle. Isn’t that right?
But do you see Paul is presenting a different option to us. Paul seems to be calling us to consider that each new day has the potential to actually be a strategic day of bringing positive change to our world... at our workplace or our school or our neighborhood or in our network of friends or family. How? By viewing ourselves as hand selected by God to be peacemakers or change agents or dysfunction chain breakers or breeders of HOPE! Rather than running or fighting, what if we asked God to help us see our every life situation through God’s perspective and then ask God to enable us and empower us to be all HE wants us to be so the Holy Spirit of God can accomplish God’s great purposes in every place we set our feet today, this week…everyday?!
That’s a powerful new way of looking at life through these words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, isn’t it? “Brother and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain [spiritually strategic] in the situation they were in when God called them.”
I urge us all to take our journals and make a list of those ordinary places you will be today, this week, this month, where God might want to accomplish something very strategic spiritually through you! Then several times over the next few days look back at the list and watch to see what God is doing… it could be very exciting my friends!
And here’s a special song today to help us in living Strategic Spiritual Impact, wherever you are in the world today.
Today’s Scripture is 1 Cor. 7:17-24.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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