we own the joint

The Word for today:

1 Thessalonians 2

mark this: 1 Thessalonians 2:12

Walk worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

When I wasn't a Christian, I wasn't 'cause I didn't want to be.

I didn't like all the tepid words associated with them--moderate words, middling words, mediocre words: temperate, meek, mild-mannered.

I'm skeptical of the temperate, meek, and mild-mannered.  I often suspect that underneath they aren't that way at all; methought--and me still thinks--that the "lady" doth protest too much.

I'm more at home with the deranged and the untethered.  They've given me far more than the discreet and judicious ever have.  So I didn't even think about being a "Christian."  I didn't want to rust to death.

Then I read the Bible, and boy was I wrong.  In the Bible, godly people were not at all like they'd been mis-represented to me.  They were wild and free and flippant and I got the distinct impression that they wouldn't have cared, one way or another, what I thought of them.

When I first read the Bible, I was lucky enough to read it like we read any other book--from the front to the back cover.  I came to faith (though I wasn't consciously aware of it) in Jesus by the time I was midway through Matthew.  But before I reached Jesus, I'd already run into Jacob, the scammer of scammers;  into David, the poet of poets and soldier of soldiers; into Elijah, the prophet of prophets; into Nehemiah, man amongst men; and into Amos, the lonest of wolves.

Suddenly, I had friends!  I'd found people who understood.  Having met them, I was primed and ready for the Jesus they believed in.

1 Thessalonians 2:12 tells us to walk worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.  That kind of "walk" has nothing whatever to do with the faux piety that so many Christians effect. 

Walking worthily has everything to do with being cognizant of just exactly who we are:  We've been called into his own kingdom and glory.  We've been summoned by the King, and seated at his table as sons.  We own the place.

So live like it.  Walk like Amos and David, like Elijah and Nehemiah, like Esther and Ruth.  Walk into the kingdom like a king.  Better yet, walk like the King of Kings himself.  (1)

Do it for God and, please, do it for that guy like me who won't go near Jesus because he won't go near the Christians he's encountered.  Enough with the tepid and timid; bring on the power and the glory we've been called to:

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.  (2 Timothy 1:7)

We own this joint.  Let's act like it.

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(1) see Revelation 17:14; 19:16