Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Ephesians 5:17


Copyright Ó 2012 J. Neely
Ephesians 5:17

17 Wherefore [dia] [touto] be ye [ginomai] not [me] unwise, [aphron] but [alla] understanding [suniemi] what [tis] the will [thelema] of the Lord [kurios] is. KJV-Interlinear

17 So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. NASB

So, do not be stupid with the use of your time in this life, but be smart.

And what does that mean?

Most folks think that they use their time wisely, or at least most of it, but do they even know what wise use of time is?

In your  life, you will sleep for eight hours of the day, work probably for eight hours of the day, commute for perhaps a couple of hours of the day, and if you are lucky enough to have those last six hours to yourself, you will find something to do at home in the form of chores and tasks, even hobbies or entertainment to fill out your day.

Most folks do not have those leisure hours as they seem to get blended into the many other activities, work or responsibilities that we all have.  Most folks spend their time simply surviving through the day so they can get to the next day and repeat the same.

Life is tough, and life is not fair.  With folks around the world, the dreams and plans of youth, are never achieved.

When young, you have dreams and plans and hopes of success and achievement, and a fulfilling life.

When you are old, you just wonder, what happened?

And the biggest single problem in looking at all of this is, that people focus their eyes on this life only, and do not focus on the spiritual side of their life.  And, if they even consider a spiritual aspect to their life, they use something that they come up with or follow some belief system, both of which are false.

The end result is failure in life, and needless to say, the misuse of waste of the time that God gave you for your eternal preparation.

Your life has two components. The first is your carnal or temporal life in this world, where in you grow up and go to school, work at a job, retire and die.  And then it is all over.

That is an over simplification of course, but that is exactly what you have when you ignore or do not pursue your spiritual life, a legitimate spiritual life.

This world has nothing to offer you, no matter if you are dead poor, or filthy rich.  At death, both are the same, and both will end up in the Lake of Fire, if unbelievers, or in heaven but without reward for believers in Chirst.  In either case the epitaph will be, ‘Here lies a wasted life.’

While you will live in this world for several decades, most likely, that is the least portion of your entire life.  Eternity follows this life and that will last forever, making it the bulk of your life. This earthly life then is really insignificant, except that it is during this life that you prepare for the next.

So, in effect, you have this blink of a life now, to prepare for your forever.  And it is that blink that needs to be used wisely, lest your forever be lost.

That means that your priorities need to be correct.  And your priorities need to line up with what God wants for you and from you.  And that means that we all need to sit back and ask the tough question, ‘Is what I am doing, right, in so far as my getting prepared for eternity?’

  

And the answer is just as easy to understand, but more difficult to attain, however.  And why is it difficult to attain?  Because, people do not want to do things Gods way, they want to do things their way.

And that is the biggest barrier to a successful life, a successful spiritual life.

You need to know that you are what you think.  You are not what you eat, not what you wear, not what you accomplish, not where you live, not what you have.  What you think is what you are. And we can expand that to say, what you think is who you are.  For you are a product of your thinking.

If you have a jerk attitude then you will be a jerk in life.  If you have a pleasant attitude, then you will be pleasant in life.

But your priority is not personality, it is spiritual preparation, correct spiritual preparation.

Your thinking is a product of what you know.  That should be obvious.

And what you know, is a result of what you learn.

We all learn by experience, by trial and error, by some form of an educational process, and so forth.

But there are two types of information, out there, that control all of what we know.  The first is the academic information of school, work, and experience.  The second type of information is Bible doctrine.

In the first type, all that we learn enters into our brain and soul by way of our five senses.  We can see, feel, taste, smell, and hear.  And then we have our intellect that correlates all of these things.  And that applies to our learning the Bible, too.  Anyone can read the Bible.  Unbelievers can read the Bible, but it does them no good as an unbeliever.  So all of the academics and experience, and experimenting in world will never advance your spiritual life even the tiniest bit.

Academics and experience are not the answer and not the priority for the spiritual life.

Bible doctrine, or the content of the Bible, the information contained therein, is the source information for your spiritual life.  But again, you have to assimilate or learn it in the proper fashion, before it will be usable and beneficial to you and your life.

That gets us to the function of the spiritual life, itself.

First and foremost, in order to have a spiritual life, you must become a member of Gods family.  You must be saved. Without that you have no spiritual life. 

Being saved is the easiest thing, ever.  All you need do is believe in Jesus Christ.  ‘Father I believe in Jesus Christ.’  Think those six words and you are saved.  It is as simple as that.  The Bible calls this being born again, because when you first believe in Christ, God creates within you, a human spirit, and into that spirit He places eternal life. 
(this study is continued tomorrow)

  

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