Doing or Being?

This year’s devotional guide is: Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional. (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2007). I have it in my Logos software, but it can be purchased for Kindle at Amazon for less than a dollar. It has a five-star rating, and reflects Tozer’s statement: “If we are going to reproduce Christ on earth and be Christlike, we must have the Spirit of Christ.”

New year often brings a desire for new beginnings, a change of direction, a desire to do better than last year. After our long trip yesterday with two flight delays and my body’s reaction to flying and far too much salt in restaurant food, it is good to be home. Last night all I wanted was sleep, but this morning am thinking about what God wants me to do in 2018.

As I read today’s devotional thoughts, I realize that while He sometimes directs decisions to one plan or another, God is usually more concerned about who I am than what I do. Life offers many options; it is how I respond that matters, my attitude toward people and situations rather that the actions I take. He is telling me to guard my motives, my reasons why behind the choices.

For instance, I’ve been asking Him whether to continue an activity that I enjoy, but this activity also puts considerable stress in my life. He is telling me either choice is okay — He wants me to examine ‘why’ I would make one choice or the other. The following passages offer some suggestions for self-examination:

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! — assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:17–24)

These verses begin with the do-nots. Do not have a hard heart that refuses to listen to the Lord. Do not be more interested in personal pleasure than being like Christ. This makes me pause. Do I favor one choice over another because it makes me feel good — as opposed to demonstrating a likeness to Jesus Christ? Christians sometimes turn to that ‘what would Jesus do’ (or mock it, because we have no clue most of the time), yet this is not helpful to me. The Bible offers no similar situation for me to study the way Jesus would handle this situation.

“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:25–32)

These verses are about actions, but they clearly bring out that God is more concerned with my attitude. He wants me to respect others by being truthful, to guard against anger that lasts too long, to work hard that I might share with those in need, and to speak in such a way that others are built up and drawn to the Lord.

He tells me not to grieve the Holy Spirit — clearly an admonition to listen to Him and follow His guidance. I’m to put away any sinful notions from my old nature and put on the gracious nature of Christ who lives within me.

All of this means a day-to-day walk with the Lord, even moment-by-moment, being what He wants me to be so that I will do what He wants me to do. One of my friends says, “We are human beings, not human doings.” In other words, if I was looking for a to-do plan for 2018, I’m not going to get it!

^^^^^^^^^

Jesus, I am okay with this. I’d still like to know whether I should say yes or no to that fun/stressful activity, but I’m starting to get the idea that I should be less concerned about the fun part and more concerned about learning why it stresses me and what You want me to do about that. This will be an interesting year!