A Look In the Mirror

Mirrors are great! Think of how bad we would all look if it weren’t for mirrors! If you want to know what you look like, you look in the mirror. That’s what mirrors are for.
The Bible tells us another way to know what we look like: look at our friends. Our friends, in many ways, mirror what we are like. Consider this verse: “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor 15:33).
Granted, the wording of this verse tends to obscure its meaning. Let me rephrase it for you in a little more understandable way. “Do not be deceived: evil companions corrupt good morals.”
Perhaps you have good morals: you don’t talk dirty, you don’t listen to worldly music, you go to church, you sing in the choir, and you do what you’re supposed to do all the time. You may be quite proud of these things, because you’re a “good kid.”
Even though you’re a good kid, you may enjoy the company and attention of the “cooler crowd,” other kids that you know do not hold the same values and standards that you do. Maybe you can be a good influence on them by hanging around with them.
This verse warns of the foolishness of that kind of thinking, because just the opposite is true. Despite your good intentions and your wholesome lifestyle, sinful friends will corrupt you. They will wear away at your resistance to sin and ungodliness. It will happen slowly, like rust eating away at the underside of your car. It won’t happen overnight, but it will eventually harm your testimony, your values, and the way you think. Your friends will affect you.
If you want to see what you look like, take a look in the mirror— the mirror of your friends. Their patterns of life will change you a little at a time, and if you do not choose wise and godly friends, your evil companions will eventually corrupt your good morals.

Prayer: Jesus' Example

I’ll be honest: one of the hardest things for me to do is to get up early. I hate getting up early in the morning! I would much rather stay up late and sleep in late. Another thing that is hard for me to do is spend significant time in prayer. Jesus, our perfect Lord and Example did both: “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1:35).
Often I don’t want to get up early or pray because I think, “I just have too much to do and I need my rest!” It’s easy to feel like we’re just too busy to pray. But Jesus, even though he was busy teaching and healing the people (see verses 34 and 39), still took time out to spend in prayer to his Father.
Other times, I think, “I’m just too tired to spend quality time in prayer.” Jesus was fully human and I know he got tired. I’m sure being with people all day long was exhausting to Jesus. He had spent the entire previous day ministering to the people, and it was a late night too— verse 32 says that even after the sun went down people were coming to him! Jesus was tired, to be sure. Yet after just a few hours of sleep, he got up and made time to pray.
I think the important point that we should take away from this anecdote from the life of Jesus Christ is that serious time spent in prayer is important. If Jesus, God’s eternal Son felt it was important enough to get up early when he was very busy and tired, then certainly we ought to place a high priority on prayer as well. Do we relegate prayer to a place of unimportance in our lives? Do we treat it as good, but unnecessary? Prayer, our communication with our Heavenly Father is not only profitable, but absolutely important. It is worth getting up early for.

Above and Beyond

There’s a saying that goes, “He would give you the shirt right off his back.” We say that about someone who is very generous. Maybe you know somebody like that, who would do anything to help you.
In the book of 2 Corinthians, Paul is encouraging the church at Corinth to give to fellow believers in Jerusalem who were constantly being persecuted by the Jewish leaders. As if that wasn’t enough, because of a recent famine, many were literally starving to death! As he traveled, Paul told other Christians about these dear believers and the response of these Christians was to give— generously.
The churches in Macedonia (such as the Philippians and Thessalonians) were especially generous. Look at what Paul says about them: “For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves; praying us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints. And this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God” (2 Cor 8:3–5).
These believers gave as much as they were able, and even more than they were able, says Paul. They really wanted to be involved in the ministry of giving to these fellow believers! They wanted to share (that’s what the word fellowship means) their money with their fellow believers in and around Jerusalem.
Why did they do this? Their giving to fellow believers was not just because they were nice folks. Rather, their generosity flowed from the fact that they had first given themselves to God. They affirmed, “God, we belong to you, and everything we have is really yours. We want to use it to serve you and your people.”
How about you? Does God have all of you? Do you willingly admit that everything you are and have belongs to him?