I love today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers and the distinction that he makes between being Christlike and DOING 'Christian' things!
The Divine Rule Of Life
Be ye therefore perfect, even as
your Father in heaven is perfect. — Matthew 5:48
Our Lord’s exhortation in these
verses is to be generous in our behaviour to all men. In the spiritual life
beware of walking according to natural affinities. Everyone has natural
affinities; some people we like and others we do not like. We must never let
those likes and dislikes rule in our Christian life. If we “walk in the light,”
as God is in the light, God will give us communion with people for whom we have
no natural affinity.
The Example Our Lord gives us is
not that of a good man, or even of a good Christian, but of God Himself. “Be ye
therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect” — show to the other
man what God has shown to you; and God will give us ample opportunities in
actual life to prove whether we are perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.
To be a disciple means that we deliberately identify ourselves with God’s
interests in other people. “That ye love one another; as I have loved you…”
The expression of Christian
character is not good doing, but Godlikeness: If the Spirit of God has
transformed you within, you will exhibit Divine characteristics in your life,
not good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’slife,
not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian is that the
supernatural is made natural in him by the grace of God, and the experience of
this works out in the practical details of life, not in times of communion with
God. When we come in contact with things that create a buzz, we find to our
amazement that we have power to keep wonderfully poised in the centre of it
all.
The measure of a born again believer is not what they DO, but WHO they represent! If we adapt Paul's attitude in Philippians 3:10 ...
10 [For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection
... then we WILL be representing HIM in the way that He most desires! People should look at us an be able to say "they have been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13)! AMEN! Here is Hillsong UNITED with "Wonder":
Shalom in Him!
