September 5 / Ephesians 4:1-6

Ephesians 4:1-6

I therefore … urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called… (v. 1) This line is one of my favorites in all of Paul’s writings. Whatever we are doing in our lives, we should be doing it “as before the Lord”. Whether work or play, church or the pub – we should reflect our Christian faith. But beyond that, we need to realize that God has called us to particular purposes and that we need to realize that calling to which you have been called. For myself, it was my college classroom for many years. It was not just a classroom, it was my ministry arena. Whatever else I was to the students in my classes, before the semester was over they certainly knew that I was a dedicated Christian – and I trust that lives were changed because of that. Today, at St. Andrew’s I wear a number of different hats, but the two most important to me are that I am the church treasurer and I lead a Read Through the Bible group. And as to the latter, I do feel bad that I did not post yesterday (only the second time in 20 months), but it’s better for you and for me that I post this morning instead of 11:00 pm when I finally had a chance to do that last night. Finally, relating to the verse I quoted above, a line comes from a Tom Hanks’ movie, Saving Private Ryan. At the end of the movie a much older “Private Ryan” is visiting the D-Day beaches that he had stormed many years earlier and he looks on the grave marker of the Tom Hanks captain who had led the group that found him and sent him home. And with tears in his eyes, he looks to his wife and asks, “Have I been good?” He needed to know that he had lived a life worth saving, as a thanksgiving to the guys who had given their lives to save his. Folks, we’re not working out our salvation, but often we need to ask ourselves if the life that is US, that life that Jesus saved by His death, that that life had been worth saving. Jesus thinks so. Do you?

ONE. That word appears seven times in verses 4-6. Reflect on that.

Slava Bohu!