GIVING OUR LORD SPOKEN RECOGNITION IN DAILY
LIFE
It occurred to me this week that many
Christians, including me, are neglecting part of our mission as followers of
Jesus Christ. How? You ask. Well, we just don’t talk about the Lord in our
everyday speech. God does so much for us. And yet, when we relate our daily
events, we use a lot more of the phrase “I did this and that, and great things
happened” rather than “Jesus did this for me” or “God opened this for me, AND
THIS IS HOW He did it.” When the Lord answers prayers, we give the recognition
in private, but too often, we don’t acknowledge the spiritual interjection publicly
in our everyday speech or in our written communications.
When we’ve taken Jesus as our Lord,
our lives aren’t nearly as much about us as they are about our Lord and brother
Jesus Christ, and our Father God, the true God of heaven. As it says in
Philippians 2:13: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do
of his good pleasure.” Whether we recognize it or not, God loves us
and is personally interested and involved in everything about our lives every
day.
God has given us a personal Lord to
guide us, talk with us, help us, and be with us all the time. He’s arranged for
signs and wonders to happen around us. He’s given us angels to protect us, warn
us, and push us in the right direction at times when we are hesitant. We have
the gift of the Holy Spirit to teach us, as Jesus told his disciples: “The Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in my name, he shall teach you all things (John 14:26a ASV). God has also arranged for other Christian believers to befriend us, and He’s even
inspired unbelievers to do certain things that benefit us.
When we accepted Jesus Christ as our
Lord and Savior, God not only rescued us forever from Satan’s hell, but He took
oversight of us and continues to orchestrate as many of His blessings toward us
as we will accept. He certainly deserves our spoken recognition and praise.
I love how the King James version
translates Philippians 1:27: “Only let your
conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and
see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in
one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” I
know that several translations replace the word “conversation” with phrases
like “your manner of life” or “how you conduct yourself,” and that is
definitely the bigger picture, but what we say out loud is a huge part of who
we are and who we represent.
2 Corinthians 5:20 tells
us: “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” If we
are ambassadors for the Lord, we need to talk about it.
I think the saying, “Actions
speak louder than words,” has been taken way too far. We have over-emphasized
the action part and nearly annihilated the words part. But I really don’t think
any of us have done this on purpose. It’s been a sneaky trick of the devil, so
much so that it’s difficult for people to even figure out HOW to talk
about the Lord’s involvement with us.
To learn how to do
anything comfortably, we must first start. And Job speaks God’s promise
and His truth: “Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase“ (Job
8:7).
So, if someone may
need a bit of help in this speaking category, here are just a few phrases we
could start with: “Jesus did this for me,” “God opened that door,” or “Jesus
brought that person to me,” or “The Lord got that person away from me.”
These verbal
recognitions of the Lord’s presence in our lives are part of how we present ourselves
as ambassadors for our Lord. And using these phrases are doing the commission
the Lord gave us from Mark 16:15: “And He
said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach and publish openly the good news’” (Mark 16:15 AMPC).
We are the courageous
ones. We are the Lord’s ambassadors to help humanity. Start today, and others
will do likewise.
Let’s fasten this in our brains and
speak it out of our mouths: “EVERY good
gift…is from above” (James 1:17).
Love, Carolyn
