For years, I have wanted to study the bible in the context of a class setting. I desired to learn yet I did not have the financial ability to take seminary courses...so I prayed. I spoke to the Most High of my desire and expressed the need for classes that were low in cost. And the opportunity was afforded to me this fall...free and clear! As a direct experience, I know that the Most High honors what is honorable. With the principle of divine reciprocity in mind enlivened by a grateful heart, I would like to render my most recent assignment...
New Testament: The Gospels and
Acts
November 9, 2015
Question #5
Explain Luke 6:46 in your own
words
“So why do you keep calling me
‘Lord, Lord!’ when you don’t do what I say?"
When I read the
scripture above the common phrase "talk is cheap" comes to mind. It is easy to speak of or profess ones
love. It takes effort and commitment to
bring the love one speaks of or professes into fullness. Truly, what is the substance of our faith?
Faith in Christ
is the interdependent working between thought and deed. Faith is love-in-action. I consider motherhood to be my most honored
ministry. It is a ministry in my life
that serves as a barometer of relationship beyond my household. I believe that "charity starts at
home." Love starts at home in the
inner woman (the house/temple of the Holy Spirit) and as a direct result is
quickened in the home that I share with my husband and children. With this in mind, the effort and commitment
to Christ begins within me like a bud and unfolds within my family as a blossoming
rose with the assurance of adding fragrance to my surrounding community. Submitting to understanding the purpose of
the affect and effect of commitment to Christ (love) is being teachable in the
process of community from the microcosm of one woman/man or one family to the
macrocosm of "one nation under
God." Israel was one man (Jacob) and one nation (12 confederate
tribes). It is not just about me or
just about our current age. Love gives root
to the whole - concerns itself with the highest good of the generations (my
children, my children's children and onward).
Do I (we) have
faith if I (we) have done nothing in the name of my (our) faith? I believe the bible to be the greatest love
story ever told, a living word in spirit and flesh. It is a telling of the highs and lows of the
effort and commitment of the Most High to grow us - the process of life, the
unfolding of our knowledge of Christ.
I am (we are)
learning. I believe "walking the
talk" or rather proving the wealth of ones talk is to continually and actively engage learning love, learning
life (James 2:14-24, 2 Timothy 2:1-7).
God is love and God is life - love in abundance, life to the full. Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground from his album Innervisions
is one of my favorite songs. The great
mark, the honorable goal is transfiguration (to attain the chief stone, reach the
ground that is our true home by pressing upward) - exercising our faith
inwardly and outwardly by demonstrating the power of God through acts of faith
step-by-step and day-by-day.
If as a mother I
decide to sleep in because I do not feel
like preparing my children for school
and/or taking my children to school to learn, would my talk of my love for my
children be in line with faith? What
does love require of me? What does love
say for me to do? Does faith require me to go beyond myself
(beyond feeling sleepy or weary)? Shall
I as a mother, shall we as ministers in Christ wakefully endure until learning
has run the full course? What is the
spiritual and practical reality of being
"a doer of the word?"
Is love the
substance of things hoped for? Is faith
the evidence of things not seen? What
will happen in our individual hearts, our single families, our neighborhoods,
our cities and nations if the "rose of Sharon" reigns in each and
reaches full bloom? May the greatest love
story ever told live, continue from generation to generation - the
experience of glory to Glory. May I (we)
run, continually and progressively do
what Christ says. May my (our) faith
endure until the end.
