Daily Devotional for Monday, July 21

The Pattern for Proper Appearance

“Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ,” 1 Corinthians 11:1.

We are thankful for good patterns. I tried to teach this to a group of teenagers once by setting up a one-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle race between four teams. To prove my point of the importance of having a proper pattern to follow, I switched the box tops. In fairly short order, they figured out what had happened, found the right top, and proceeded to finish the puzzle quickly. Wrong patterns create confusion and prevent success.

In following Christ, we need patterns of faithfulness. It is our goal to pattern our lives after Christ, but sometimes we need help knowing how that should look. God places certain individuals in our lives to teach us how to follow Christ: parents, pastors, teachers and other godly men and women. We observe their lives, compare them to the Scriptures, then pattern ourselves accordingly.

Paul knew that others were watching him. He did not want his life to cause anyone to stumble in the walk with Jesus. Moreover, he knew that others should be watching him. He wanted them to watch him as he followed Jesus. He became a living example of following Jesus so others could mimic his behavior and faithfulness. A real-life example helps others to put Scripture into practice.

We have this responsibility to both follow the godly examples God puts in our lives and to be the godly example for others in our lives. We have a dual duty to follow the pattern and to set the pattern. Without seeing what following Jesus looks like, and without showing what following Jesus looks like, we are in a race to build a puzzle without the right box top.

REFLECTION

We should have both a Paul and a Timothy in our lives—one to disciple us and one to be discipled by us.

Jason Rutherford