Seasoning for Your Doing

January 13, 2015

Seasoning for Your Doing

But be doers of the word, 

and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

James 1:22 (NRSV)

A week ago, (January 5), I wrote about our secret place. How good it is when we still our hearts and hear Abba whisper, “You are my beloved, with whom I am delighted and upon whom my favor rests.” But Jesus didn’t stay in his secret place, and neither shall we. Our mission is to take the wonder of our personal experience with God and share our lives with the world around us.

When you read the Gospels, you find that Jesus was mostly on the move, going from village to village to meet the poor, captives, blind, and all who were in need. The wisdom of our calling to be witnesses for God’s Kingdom is that we don’t have to travel far and wide to be messengers of Good News. As we are witnesses for Christ, we will want to remember the observation of evangelist Malcolm Smith, “God created us as human beings and we have turned into human doings.”  Sometimes we can get so caught up in our doing for Christ that our “beloved-ness” get pushed to the back burner. We’ve all had the experience of someone making a statement like, “I didn’t see you in Sunday School,” or church, or some committee meeting or function. Some people can make those statements with their voice ringing with judgment as though attendance at a particular function should have superseded anything else happening in our life.

This attitude exemplifies one type of “doers of the word.” They have a strong emphasis on love as a verb, on doing something for the Lord. However, Jesus had a certain way that he went about being a “doer of the word.” Imagine how the simple statement above could have taken on a completely different flavor if the person had first heard Abba say, “You are my beloved, with whom I am delighted and upon whom my favor rests,” and then let that eternal truth season their doing of the word.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms is available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ  is available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.