Years
ago, a prominent minister once had a very eccentric man in his congregation who
was trying to be a zealous Christian. Unfortunately, the man usually did the
wrong thing. The man was a barber. One day he was lathering up a customer for a
shave. He came at the man with a razor in his hand and said, “Sir, are you
prepared to meet your God?” The customer was scared out of his senses, jumped
up and fled the barbershop with lather on his face!
In
Ephesians 5:15-20, Paul gives general
instructions about how Christians are to live holy lives. He calls on
Christians in Ephesus to imitate the life of Christ, and he calls on us to do
the same thing today. For example, we must take advantage of every opportunity
to do good works. Just as Christ emptied himself of his deity to come to earth
to minister to us, we are to empty ourselves of our worldly lives and habits to
serve others.
As
believers we must live our lives very carefully. We must put each step of our
lives exactly where it belongs. The path of Christian living and holiness isn’t
always clear until we study God’s Word. Our lives must be seen as constant
conversations with God. In order to
discern his holy will, we need wisdom, especially in our sin-filled world. The
only way to gain that wisdom is to study God’s Word all of the time. When we
understand what God wants us to do we can go out into the world and share both
the Good News of the Gospel and Christ’s love to a hurting world that
desperately needs to hear words of hope and see those words put into action.
As
children of God, we are to imitate God. We are to do what God would do,
including loving our enemies. We are to be active participants in worship, and
not merely spectators. We want to move in and out of God’s plan for redemption,
but it can’t be so. We must expose the darkness of our sin-filled world to the
light of Christ’s love. We must use the wisdom of God’s Word to make our
conduct consistent with our faith.
Sometimes
it’s easy for us to allow our eagerness to get in the way of common sense.
Sometimes we are in a situation where emotions are high, such as after the
death of a loved one. It’s at times like this when we feel the need to say
something about Jesus, but that would be a mistake. The best way to minister in that situation is
simply to be there and love the person who is experiencing loss.
That
does not mean that we are to curb our enthusiasm for spreading the Good News.
We have much to do and not enough time to do it. God has numbered our days.
Because our lifetimes are limited, we need to view each day as a precious gift
to be lived wisely and according to God’s will, which is laid out in the Bible.
Wine
is a short-lived ecstasy that is destructive but the Holy Spirit is a genuine
ecstasy that is creative and uplifting. It’s no secret that bars and taverns
draw more people than the church. In fact, most sinful, earthly pleasures draw
more people than the church. These earthly pleasures give short-term pleasure
and long-term pain. The vitality of the Holy Spirit brings permanent pleasure
and meaning. It truly lifts people out of themselves into a higher mood in
which they can commune with God and understand his will. We need to be filled
with the Holy Spirit. We have to depend on him every minute of every day. We
are to make the most of our time on earth fulfilling God’s purposes. We must
take up every possible opportunity for worship and service. In other words, we
must continually live under the Holy Spirit’s influence by letting God’s Word
control our lives.
Just
like a person drunk with wine gives control of his/her life to inebriation, the
Christian who is filled with the Holy Spirit gives over control of his/her life
to the Holy Spirit. The command is in the present tense, which indicates that
being filled with the Holy Spirit is not a once-for-all experience but a
continuous one. Spirit-filled Christians exhibit the characteristic of
speaking, singing, making melody with instruments, giving thanks and
submitting.
To
be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with joy and gratitude. The only way
to be filled with the Spirit is to eat what wisdom and the bread of life (aka
Jesus) have set before us. Once we are filled with the Holy Spirit we have to
pay attention to how we spend our time. We must spend our time on eternal
things instead of spending time on worldly things. We are to spend our time
imitating God by doing God’s work in our world.
We
must do God’s work with a sense of urgency. We are living in a time between the
start of God’s reign and its completion when Jesus returns. We must have a
sense of urgency because Jesus could return at any time. During this time, our
duties to God must include singing and thanksgiving.
Our Christian faith is not to be used to escape the world. It is a sanctuary for strength and renewal, but it is also a staging ground for the battle against the forces of evil. We can’t relax our witness or lower ourselves to the moral standards of our world. We must never take our eyes off of Jesus. We need to tread carefully in our sin-filled world so that we won’t stumble and fall. We need to take each step cautiously, and we need to take each step with Jesus by our side.
In
order to discern God’s will, we must not neglect prayer, Scripture reading or
worship. Through these we listen to the Word, and we talk with the Lord and
with others who are talking and walking with God. As we go through this
process, we clarify God’s will.
Life
is short. In fact, it could end at any time. It is so short that when we get to
heaven we might be amazed that our lives went by so quickly. There are timeless
moments that must be lived right now. These moments can be as small and
precious as smiling at your waiter or waitress in a restaurant or saying “God
bless you” to the grocery store cashier. We must make the most of every moment
of every day, and the best way to do that is to love and serve God in each and
every way each and every day.
Everything
we do in our lives is a chance to bring the mind of Christ to bear on the
reality of our world. The only way to do this is to think ahead to what’s
happening next in our lives and stay in a prayerful frame of mind. We must
learn to understand the mind of Christ so we can let his thoughts, words and
teachings guide and direct our decisions and actions. He can even use our
problems as opportunities for us to trust him more.
Before
we can be filled with the Holy Spirit, we must want to be filled with the Holy
Spirit. We must remove anything that hinders us from being filled with the Holy
Spirit. Being with the Holy Spirit is to be under his control moment-by-moment.
If
we want our lives to count for something, we must make God’s will a main
priority in our lives. Our world needs to know what God wants us to do. God
wants us to live our lives with purpose. When the Holy Spirit lives in us, our
lives will reflect the love of Christ. Faith begins when we know God’s will.
Without understanding God’s will, we can’t have faith in what he wants us to do
in our lives. When we understand his will, we are wise. The way of wisdom
involves a life filled with the Holy Spirit. It involves adopting the attitudes
of joy, gratitude, humility and respect. It’s a way of life defined by showing
God’s grace and mercy to others. Just
think of how much better our world would be if everyone loved God and loved
people. As the old song goes, what a wonderful world it would be.
Bibliography
1.
Jeremiah,
David: The Jeremiah Study Bible, NKJV (Brentwood,
TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013)
2.
ESV Study
Bible. Part of Wordsearch 10 Bible software package.
3.
Dunnam, M.D.
& Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s
Commentary Series, Vol. 31 Galatians/Ephesians/Philippians/Colossians/Philemon (Nashville,
TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982)
4.
Stanley,
C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life
Principles Bible, NKJV (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
5.
MacArthur,
J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible, NASV
(Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
7.
Dr. Ray
Pritchard, “How Can I Be Filled With the Holy Spirit?” Retrieved from www.keepbelieving.org
11. Melinda Quivik, “Commentary on Ephesians 5:15-20.”
Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1379
12.
Susan Hayden, “Commentary on Ephesians 5:15-20.”
Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=376
13.
Preaching Magazine, May/June 2015 (Nashville, TN:
Salem Publishing; pp. 55-56
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