Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Confidence”
Our Bible verse for today: “Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God.” 1 John 3:19 (NLT)
Our thought for today: “We must walk the talk.”
I’ve known many professing Christians who talk a good game but whose actions are less than convincing when it comes to living the Christian life. If you ask them, they’ll profess to be a Christian based upon some childhood VBS experience, but there’s little evidence in their lives since then that the profession of faith was real.
Others have lived a genuine life of devotion and obedience in the past, but at this time in life are not involved in the life of a good church (despite the clear commands of Scripture to do so), and their walk gives all the appearance of having taken them far from God.
Still others do go through the motions of practicing the faith, and they do attend a worship service on a semi-regular basis, and therefore they do project some appearance of genuine faith when they’re at the gatherings of the church, but how they live Monday through Saturday paints a different picture. It’s like the singer Jimmy Buffet once observed, “There’s a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning!”
One thing most of those people have in common is that if asked, they’ll give you long and winding explanations designed to convince you that their faith is genuine and sincere even though their actions tell a different story.
Those long-winded explanations always remind of the famous line from William Shakespeare, “Me thinkest thou dost protest too much!” In other words, if you have to put that much effort into trying to convince others about the rightness of your choices, you’re probably fibbing.
What does all this have to do with our theme of “confidence”? John explained it well in 1 John 3:19. “Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God.” If our actions are right and just, if we truly are being obedient to God and living Biblically, we’ll have the confidence to simply stand before Him and we won’t feel the need to try to convince others. We won’t have to. Our actions will speak for themselves.
I encourage all of us to consider whether or not we are really walking the talk – are we really living what we profess to believe?
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 