Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in YouTube images and lyrics from the group 4Him singing … The Basics of Life … poignantly singing of how we have drifted far away from Christ’s golden rule method of treating one another and how we need to get to those “basics of life.”
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Highlight Verse[s]: 1 Thessalonians 5:15 [NLT] … 15 See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.
… All Paul was doing was restating the truth espoused by Jesus in the “golden rule” [see Matthew 7:12]
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Highlight Passage [context]: 1 Thessalonians 5:11-17 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… God, thru Paul, gives His “bottom-line”advice on how to think about and treat one another.
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Reference Passage : … Matthew 7:12 [NLT] … 12 “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets. …”
… Jesus summarizes the essence of God’s law and the wisdom of all the Prophets in one “golden rule” to guide how we all should live toward others.
Reference Passage : … Luke 9:23 [NLT] … 23 Then He said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be My follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow Me. ..."
… And if we obey Christ and follow Him, we will choose to think as He does and act as He did toward others.
Reference Passage : … Galatians 6:9-10 [NLT] … 9 So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. 10 Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith.
… Paul repeating God’s exhortation to treat others even better than we would treat ourselves.
Reference Passage : … Philippians 2:3-4 [NLT] … 3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
… How many times does God, the Paul, have to command us to live by Christ’s golden rule?
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Xochitl Dixon, uses an interesting word picture to illustrate our “natural” tendency as humans to bring others down rather than lift them up. The ODB author writes … When my cousin invited me to join him to fish for crawdads (crayfish), I couldn’t help but be excited. I grinned when he handed me a plastic pail. “No lid?”
“You won’t need one,” he said, picking up the fishing rods and the small bag of chicken chunks we’d use for bait.
Later, as I watched the small crustaceans climbing over one another in a futile attempt to escape the almost-full bucket, I realized why we wouldn’t need a lid. Whenever one crawdad reached the rim, the others would pull it back down.
The word picture of the crayfish climbing over each other to get out of the bucket is an apt one to describe how we so often treat each other in this world rather than living by the Lord’s “golden rule.” And how often do we let our base - selfish - nature move us to live more like the crayfish than how Christ commanded us to live in His “Golden Rule” (Matt. 7:12)?
And so, after we’ve taken in the song by 4Him today, along with the truths espoused by Jesus and the Apostle Paul in the Scriptures above, can we commit ourselves to at least one day where we use the “Golden Rule” as our guide for treating others and live as Christ would have us live rather than as the crawdads live?
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My THANKFULNESS: … Oh Abba Father, … thank You, Lord, … for showing us Your GOLDEN RULE way of living to overcome our base nature.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, … King Jesus, … I pray, Lord, that all reading here can, and will, join me to live out at least today using your “Golden Rule” to guide the way we treat others. … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled “Our Daily Bread,” distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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