Reflection
How much do societal norms of acceptance undermine our actions? We probably all have a concept of what a just world would look like. If presented with choices, we would probably choose what was most aligned with our expressed principles. The question is not what we know to be good, but how we live it out. How often do we find that what we actually support is not what the values we claim to espouse? Is it really possible to be firm in our gospel belief one way and support something other by our words or actions or even our silence? To live in a way that undermines our own expressed belief system is to live a conflicted life. How we live shows who we truly are
Prayer
Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:18
Action
How consistent are your words and actions with what you claim to believe? Is there anything that needs to change?
Suggested Reading
To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.
Proverbs 21:3
You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
Henri Nouwen
Christianity does not remove you from the world and its problems; it makes you fit to live in it, triumphantly and usefully.
Charles Templeton
It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as something to be discussed and not as something to be experienced.
William Barclay
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
Few things are more infectious than a godly lifestyle. The people you rub shoulders with every day need that kind of challenge. Not prudish. Not preachy. Just cracker jack clean living. Just honest to goodness- bone deep- non-hypocritical integrity.
Chuck Swindoll
To think is easy. To act is difficult.
To act as one thinks is the most difficult.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Be who you are and say what you feel
because those who mind don’t matter
and those who matter don’t mind.
Dr. Seuss