Word Servant

“Therefore, laying aside falsehood, SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE of you WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, for we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.” –Ephesians 4:25-27 ESV
     Knowing as verse 24 says that I am to put on the new self that is created in the likeness and holiness of God, Paul following up with this verse makes sense but can also step on a lot of toes. It’s easy to get caught up in telling lies. Some of us do it through white lies in order not to hurt people’s feelings. Some of us do it in fear of people seeing us for who we truly are, so we lie on others or about situations so that we may be seen in the best light. The reasons for and the levels of the lies are not of importance here. What is important is where and whom it is from.
     Jesus makes it clear that the Devil is the father of lies, and those who were against Christ were of their father, the Devil. Consider that the Devil pitc…

“They have become  callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:19-24 ESV

These six verses speak volumes. While our old self is gone when we profess Christ as Lord, I read this and started looking at putting the old self away and taking up our cross daily as being part of the same perpetual ritual. Both of which work toward renewing us from within, transforming our minds so that we can have a deeper relationship with Jesus.

Think about the spirit within us. Yes, we have a spirit and a body; but, I am talking the life God breathed into man—…

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” —Ephesians 4: 17-18 (ESV)

Reading and rereading Ephesians 4:17-18, I look at the life I used to live, the man I used to be and then I look at the world as it is and I see this verse. It is easy to get hung up on Paul saying not to be like the Gentiles. If he lived today, he could just as easily have used “Unchurched” or “Unbelievers” or my fave: “Secular Society.”

Any thread on social media that has to do with faith shows what Paul is talking about. Unfortunately , some of us should keep this verse in mind when the anti-Christian naysayers wade in with their posted attacks. We should point them to Christ, embody the love that He is the embodiment of as God in the Flesh, and remember that their understanding has been dar…

“As a result, we are no longer to bechildren, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” –Ephesians 4:16-18 NASB (Emphasis added).
     These scriptures remind me of how I have failed at this. Paul uses ‘children’ to indicate the immaturity of a small kid. Anyone who has been around small kids knows what he’s talking about—the back-talking, the temper tantrums, and the promise of being good, of listening only to throw that out the window as soon as a new toy catches their eye in the store. For some kids, it is candy, or not wanting to leave a friend’s home. Whatever it is for the child, there…