3 John 11 --- Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who practices good [exhibiting godly character, moral courage and personal integrity] is of God; the one who practices [or permits or tolerates] evil has not seen God [he has no personal experience with Him and does not know Him at all].
The Lord really motivated me yesterday to get moving in a lot of areas. One of them being writing. I haven't written fiction since Aaron and I ran our own publishing entertainment company about 11 years ago, but the Lord has consistently been directing me towards more creative things all year long. Anyway, I'm sure you're thrilled to hear about all of this! LOL. I do ask for your prayers over this area as I want to follow and honor the Lord every step of it.
After prayer today, we moved into the Word and resumed our journey in 3 John. We've gone through the good example of Gaius, then we came across the bad example of Diotrephes. He was hindering the good news of Jesus through his pride, which drove him to be unloving to his fellow brothers/sisters in Christ who travelled into the area. You know, I pray Diotrephes got his life straight with Jesus and is in heaven, but to think of being immortalized in God's word as a bad example like this. Ouch. I know such things don't matter once you're standing in His presence though.
Today we see in verse eleven we're given a simple command. Do not imitate what is evil but imitate what is good. This one is simple on the surface, but the hard part is, are we paying close enough attention in our lives to realize what it is we're imitating, let alone if it's good or bad?
Imitate in the Greek is the word mimeomai and means: to imitate: any one. This draws off the root word mimos, which is mime, actor, imitation, mimicking.
So, this simple command, do not imitate evil, but imitate good, requires us to be very intentional and aware of who we're allowing to influence our lives. This letter has given encouragement to Gaius for the good he was doing in loving his brothers and sisters and warning of Diotrephes' prideful and unloving ways, and to avoid this. We're given clear examples of good and evil ways and told to mimic one and not the other.
We consume and take in so much on a daily basis, from social media, YouTube, tik tok, Netflix, music, pod casts, dare I say books, and in talking with people throughout the day. That’s a lot of voices from a lot of people, a lot of places, and we barely scratched the surface!
The issue is we’ve become so numb in the cacophony of daily life who can honestly say they know exactly who/what they’ve taken in and whether it’s good or bad? Most times we know it’s a mix of good and bad but in our excessive busyness we just become indifferent. We even tolerate or accept evil because nowadays it’s just too much effort to sort out what exactly is good and bad. The world continues to redefine everything until it all means nothing. So, it just becomes static and noise that we like to feel we interact and are in charge of, but reality is we usually aren't.
It also doesn’t help that most professing Christians are biblically illiterate because they do not read Gods Word regularly. Instead, they opt for quick devotionals, 45 second video clips of preaching, or a meme with a single verse or happy quote. There is nothing wrong with any of those but if your knowledge of God and relationship with Him hinge on these and showing up on Sundays, how can you know truly know evil from good.... or even more scarily, how can you know Him?
If we don’t slow down and get really intentional about Jesus, the Word, His Truth, and loving others, we will end up mimicking the world we’re immersed in whether you want to or not. Then without realizing it, you say you follow Jesus, but there are many other things that come before Him and His Truth. Jesus says in Matthew 6:24 no one can serve two masters. They’ll hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other.
So what's the point?
Slow down. Be intentional. Know His Truth, Know His Word. Then take today's command seriously and side by side with the Lord start to go over all the voices bombarding you daily. Then, DO NOT imitate the evil ones, be aware of them, avoid them, let the Lord shield you from them AND whatever is good and Godly, DO imitate it!
Lots of words today. Be the Berean and see for yourself what Gods word says! If anyone needs prayer or just someone to listen send me a message on FB, Instagram or through the site. You are not alone.
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