3 John 5 --- Beloved, you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brothers and sisters, and especially when they are strangers;
I was off work today, so I took my son Matt out to the Weatherford Disc Golf course. I brought along all my Bible study stuff and planned to do everything out in nature. I started talking with the Lord and before you know it, I was caught up in the beauty of His creation. The beautiful colors, the sounds, tons of squirrels being squirrely. I blinked my eyes and Matt was finished. I took some pictures of nothing in particular but was just astounded by the greens and blues all around. It was absolutely amazing to see and feel God's presence all around in the beauty of nature.
So, today we didn't move from verse five. It was "acting faithfully" that kept us anchored her another day.
Acting here is poieis in the Greek and means: to do, to follow some method in expressing by deeds the feelings and thoughts of the mind; to perform something worthy of a Christian.
Faithfully is piston in the Greek and means: believing, confiding, trusting; to do something harmonizing with (Christian) faith.
Putting it all together here he was expressing through his deeds, the thoughts, and feelings of his mind, which were harmonizing with the love, truth, and commandments of God.
Action in line with Jesus, with truth, and with love.
That sentence convicts me. It makes me stop and really think about my actions. Not just am I doing good things, but are my thoughts and feelings in harmony with Jesus and the Word...with His agape love?
Being transparent, just today I did something out of frustration. Now it wasn't anything bad, it was actually something I needed to do. It was the right thing to do. It was a good thing to do. However, my thoughts and feelings were not harmonized in any way with my Christian faith, so the action I performed, even though it was something good, had the wrong heart behind it. My doing the right thing out of frustration caused a speedbump between Amanda and me.
I'm not condemning myself, overly focusing on the negative, or staring at the storm here. No way. Instead, the beauty and joy of it all is Holy Spirit brought it to my attention! I was convicted by my heart behind my actions. This drove me to pray about it, repent of it, turn from that direction, refocus on Jesus in it all. Then to go to my wife and apologize. To talk with her about it from a heart of love, that did line up with Jesus.
Are your actions in line with Jesus, with Truth and with Love?
Really that's all for today. Really amazing that God would keep me where he did today, knowing that halfway through my study, I would trip over this very thing. I'm glad He loves me so much to confront me and help me to stay on His narrow path in life. I couldn't do it without Him for sure!
That's it for today. Be the Berean. Read this for yourself. Pray and talk to God yourself. Journey with Him into an adventure of your own! You'll never regret it.
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