Now about those matters you wrote about…1 Corinthians 7:1
There are two things I want from God every morning when I wake up. I want to know beyond a doubt that He loves me and I crave the fresh wind of His Holy Spirit to breath life into even the most mundane parts of my life. I DO NOT want to just go through the motions. I want to live transformed by knowing Jesus.
That being said, I have a hard time appreciating what the Corinthians must have gone through in becoming a community of faith. What Christ did on the cross broke the old rules of class, culture, gender and economics. It shook world views to the core and it was his earliest followers who were left to work out the functional implications. Easier said then done. In steps Paul to settle questions, bring order and establish precedence. But here’s what stands out to me, as fallen and confused as the Corinthian church was, it did not want to stay this way. It is clear that church leaders had sought Paul’s counsel in previous communications about very specific items which left them in confusion. They did not want to be stuck in their old ways.
I want to be more and more like the Corinthian believers in this respect. As we the church have to face more and more shifting and opposing world views outside our doors, may we be honest and humble enough to admit where we have fallen but brave enough to look to God and walk in the truth He has called us to. It is incredibly easy to write these words, but it is more complex when I am with my unbelieving friends who know no need for God in their lives and are trying to understand where in the world I am coming from.
God, I pray that you help this sinner live out the beauty of your truth. It is a calling far greater than I. After all, isn’t that the whole point?
Sixty-six books in a year 