Do you want others to imitate you?

This weekend I was supposed to make a trip to Richmond to visit my friends and church family up there, but it turned out I couldn't go because of my knee pain. Well, after attending church with my family at Thalia Lynn Baptist this morning, I believe there is good reason I wasn't able to go. On the drive to church this morning, I was thinking through some of the questions that last week's service at Holland Road raised for me. (For those of you who may not have read my post about last week, you can find it here.) Upon arriving at the church, I quickly discovered the title for today's message was "Do You Want Others to Imitate You?" At this point, I was very curious and ready to hear what the Prentice was going to share with us.

The first couple of verses, Prentice used was 2 Timothy 2:1-2, which states "You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." (ESV) In Paul's letter to Timothy, he is instructing Timothy to pass on what we has learned from Paul to others who will then teach others. So, Jesus taught Paul, Paul taught Timothy, Timothy was to teach others who would teach others, etc. As Christians what we know is a combination of what we have read in the Bible for ourselves and what others have taught us. We have all had someone that we look up to and try to imitate and we are instructed to pass on that knowledge to others. The question then is not if someone is looking up to you and is going to try to imitate you, but it is what are you giving them to imitate? Do you really want others to imitate what you do? 

Pastor shared with us that the things that are imitated are magnified in the person who is trying to imitate that action, so if we are passing along bad habits/actions then those habits/actions will be magnified in those that are following us. The problem with this is we cannot decide what others imitate, we can only decide how we act on a day-to-day basis. Many people say well I go to church every time the doors are open, so people who are imitating me will go to church....Not exactly! What difference is going to church making in the way you live your life outside of the four walls of the church building? How do you act daily away from your church friends? at work? at school? at home? What are others seeing in you? Sometimes we are the first Bible people read and they are expecting us to act differently. The question is are we ready to rise to the challenge? 

Not only are other people expecting to see a difference in the way we act, but God calls us to holiness. We are to strive to follow the example that Jesus set for us and to show God's love to the people we encounter everyday, even those who disagree with us. It is easy to love those who agree with us, but how are we treating those people who we disagree with or who have a different perspective than us? 

Do you want others to imitate the way you are living? If so, great keep it up, but I would imagine there are things in each of lives that could use some work. What are those things in your life? What are you going to do about them? If you can't think of anything that needs work, pray and ask God to show those things to you and then begin to work on those things.