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We also need to stop moving, to stop hurrying on to the next thing so we can take time to think about how we’re living. I’m not suggesting we have to overthink everything. But I do believe we need to pause regularly so we might examine carefully how we’re living in the present moment and where we’re headed in the next moment.

We live in a day when many leaders in all sectors live and lead in ways that promote their own good rather than the good of others or the organizations they lead. The moral failure of leaders begets mistrust and suspicion.

How we live each day should reflect the fact that we have been set apart by God for relationship with him and for participation in his work.

Ephesians 4:1 urges us “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which [we] have been called.” What is this calling to be lived out in our daily lives? It is what the first three chapters of Ephesians have revealed about God’s plan and our crucial part in it...

When Paul speaks of “this world,” he is not thinking about the physical earth: rocks, trees, water, and so forth. Rather, he is thinking about what we might call culture, worldview, or the spirit of the age. He is envisioning the world as a system of powers that pulls us in the direction of sin and death. When we were dead in our trespasses and sins, we were living according to the ways of the world, a world that entraps us and entices us to live contrary to God. We were living behind enemy lines.

Worship, rightly understood, is a moment-by-moment choice to live for God and God’s glory.

According to the Bible, we live in enemy territory, so to speak. We are caught in a world that opposes God, not just in human hearts, but in systems and institutions. Scripture helps us to see the world as it is—not  so that we might abandon it, but so that we might participate in God’s work of redeeming the world and its people.

Written by Mark D. Roberts. Categories include De Pree Journal.