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Do's And Don'ts


          Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:15-20)

          The first thing that stood out to me in today’s passage is the comment that “the days are evil.” At first, I thought in terms of “Yeah, the days are evil – look how they conspire against my getting anything done. They limit the amount of good we can do.” That’s why we need to have wisdom and to understand what God’s will is, so we can do the most good we can do. And…that works. It makes perfect sense, even though it’s undoubtedly not what God meant.
           It is far more likely that what He meant is that the days, or the times in which we live are evil. They were evil when Paul lived. They are evil now. The main difference may be that there are more people, with more power and opportunity to do evil than ever before. Because of this, we need, if anything, to be wiser than Paul.
And even back then, God warned his people to be careful how they live. I hate the sound of that. Some of my struggles at the moment are over being responsible and giving myself permission. I prefer to take intermittent care so that I don’t have to be constantly vigilant, but I find that doesn’t work as well as I’d like.
          What, specifically, does Paul suggest?
1)      Understand what the Lord’s will is.
          This isn’t “Should I wear the red shirt, or the yellow shirt? What do you say, Lord?” We seem to like to make a big deal about God’s will, but it’s simple. His will is that we will love Him with all our heart, souls, minds, and strengths, and that we will love our neighbors as ourselves. His will is that we have faith in Him and obey Him.
2)      Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.
          This isn’t “But beer or whiskey are OK, right?” Debauchery is excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures. People drink to relax and unwind, I’m told, but drunkenness generally result in people doing things they would never do while sober. Embarrassing things. Foolish things.
3)      Be filled with the Spirit
          How does one do this? What does it mean? For some people, it seems to be an almost magical, empowering thing. That hasn’t been my experience. For me to be filled with something means that there is nowhere that the filling substance isn’t. This means there’s no “God can have my heart, but not my sexuality,” or “God can have my Sunday morning, but not my Friday night, or Sunday afternoon, or Monday morning.”  I don’t know which are less likely to be God-filled: the parts of our lives where we feel out-of-control, or the areas in which we think we’re most in-control.

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