GetWisdom PaperturnSampler FINAL SinglePages - Flipbook - Page 116
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LIVING FOR WHAT REALLY MATTERS
sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and
exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of.
I always want exact instructions in life. Like: If I do this, then
that will happen. You know, A + B = C. I love that Paul gives us
this type of instruction (we’ll talk more about this in week 6). To
live an authentic life, we need to “learn to love appropriately,” to
“use [our] head and test [our] feelings so that [our] love is sincere
and intelligent.” We need to “live a lover’s life . . . a life Jesus will
be proud of.”
So let’s be lovers of people. Not in a romantic way (though that’s
good too) but by striving to be the kind of woman who loves everybody. All the time. No matter what. That’s a radical concept, isn’t it?
I know, I get it. I can think of people who are very different from me,
who drive me nuts, who are even toxic or dangerous, and sometimes
I think I don’t want to—or even shouldn’t—love them. The thing is:
It doesn’t say we need to be best friends with them or that we need
to approve of their behavior. But we do need to love them as God
loves them, because as much as we’d like to turn our backs from the
fact sometimes, they are His children too. He loves those hard-to-like
people every bit as much as He loves us.
“And so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ”
(verse 10)
If we love the way Paul is encouraging us to here, we’ll be able to discern how to live a life that is pure (translated in the BLB as sincere 24)
and blameless. As Bible commentator Frank Thielman puts it, “Paul’s
basic request for the Philippians . . . is that they might express their
love in ways that show both a knowledge of how to obey God’s will
generally, and, more specifically, of how to make moral decisions
based on God’s will in the give-and-take of everyday living.”25 Ben
and I are always telling our kids that “words matter,” and I think
that’s partially what Paul is trying to say here. Words overflow from
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