Understand What the Master Wants

Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the master wants. Ephesians 5:17 (The Message)

In my morning reading I was challenged to think about what God wants me to understand in this verse. The Message uses carelessly and unthinkingly. Most translations use foolish. I like how The Message does it here. It’s easy to think that I am not foolish, but careless or without thinking brings it much closer to home.

It’s so easy to live a casual life; going through life doing the same thing, going through the motions without giving a lot of thought to what is going on around me.

I can be a very disciplined person. That can be good but sometimes the disciplines of things like Bible reading and prayer end up just being disciplines and are not done with a lot of thought. I usually think it’s better to do them than not do them, at least there is the possibility of God speaking to me. The above verse would challenge me to give more thought to what I am doing; to be present in the moment.

Another thing I get out of this verse related to the unthinking part regards speech. There are many times where my mouth gets ahead of my brain. Words flow out without the filter my brain should give them. The truth though is that the words come from my heart. So on one hand I need to think carefully about what I am going to say and also when I see rotten words flowing I need to let God clean up my heart.

So this is part of what my Master wants. Living carefully and thoughtfully will keep me out of a lot of trouble.

Philip