Steadfast Servants – Part Two
Galatians 5: 22, 23
This text identifies three areas regarding which we should be faithful. The first is ourselves. That dramatically impacts the other two.
Wisely the poet, Shakespeare, said, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, Line 65).
Inconsistency incriminates individuals. One reason there is so little faithfulness to God and people is there is little basic faithfulness to our own higher self.
We are created in the image of God. If we are unfaithful to that image we are less than we were created to be, and are living an unfulfilled life. That inevitably results in a feeling of frustration which deteriorates into bitterness, resentment, and eventually hate.
Who are you anyway? You are the person you have chosen to be. Sure, we are modified by genes and genealogy, but each of us chooses what we will commit. Some choose to become a slave to their thyroid or pituitary glands. They let their emotions or feelings control them. Some choose to be driven by testosterone or adrenalin. At birth you came equipped with a perpetually developing asset that can override all these glandular drives. It is called a mind and a free will. You are the person you choose to be. Choose to be controlled by Jesus and you will be.
J.L. Singer of Yale University states: “The outlook of any moral value can be changed through TV viewing.” Considering that the average American watches TV 3.3 hours a day, that is important. We must be careful who gets in our head to conform our way of thinking to theirs.
One Hollywood producer said, “My primary objective is to manipulate you. I’m only successful if I can get you to cry, to laugh, to ache, and be thrilled exactly when I want you to. All the years I’ve trained, all the dialogue I write, every camera angle I choose, and all the music I use is designed for one reason and one reason only: to manipulate your emotions…You will not go away unaffected. We’ve gotten too good at what we do.”
The marvel of life is we can change. Will James, father of modern psychology in the western world said, “The greatest discovery of the Twentieth Century is that a man can change his life by changing his mind.
Don’t overlook the phrase “And such were some of you.” Distill that sentence into a word of importance and it is “were.”
Past tense, they were, but they changed. How? I Corinthians 6: 11: “But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”
You too can change and become even more faithful to your better self.