Wednesday Words of Encouragement

Ephesians 5:1-2 (HCSB) ~

Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. And walk in love, as the Messiah also loved us and gave Himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

When the boys were little they followed Dan around and imitated everything he did.  They loved nothing more than riding in the car with him and going places.  Whatever he did they wanted to do.  When they played, I would often catch them pretending to preach or mimicking something that they had seen their daddy do. 

At times, our children's imitation of us wasn't so pleasant.  I would hear attitudes and words come out of them that showed they watching everything we said and did, and it wasn't always positive. 

Just as children imitate their parents, we are to imitate our Heavenly Father.  We should be watching how He acts and reacts, what He says and how He responds.  Jesus example should be what we try to mimic.  We should be following Him around and trying to emulate His deeds.  The good thing about having Christ as our model is that there is nothing negative about Him.

But often, we put our eyes on human role models or public figures or a host of other people and set them up as our guide.  The problem with that is that humans fail.  They are frail and make mistakes and just as our children can pick up our bad traits, the same is true of those we try to follow. 

Let's keep our eyes on Christ and use Him as our example to imitate.  We will never be steered wrong when we have Him as our model!

John 13:15 (HCSB) ~

For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done for you.