Being an Imitator

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Ephesians 5:1 says, “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;”

     As a young boy, I had  the opportunity to ride wit h my Dad sometimes when he would stop a the house on his way from South Bend to Michigan City where the terminal was.  He wold let me ride along in the cab of the semi and watch him as he drove.  In those days, you had to  double clutch in order to change gears and then to push down on the accelerator.  I watched his feet moving and the hands , one on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift.  Then, I wold home and get into the 1929 Oldsmobile, that didn’t run, but I made it run in my mind and was double clutching as I went through the gears.  I was imitating my Dad and tried to do everything that he did.

     The passage above uses the word “followers” of God and the word “followers” is one that means “imitate.”  Certain denominations will often have a special speaker in their midst whom will often be imitated by other preachers.  Even at Washington Bible College, students would imitate their favorite professor in mannerisms, speech, vocabulary and such.  We take those whom we admire and try to pattern our lives after their life.  The supreme example is the one given above.  We are to be imitators of God.  That’s what it would mean to “follow God.”   The lives that we live should be ones that are patterned after the life of the Lord Jesus Chrjist.  There is our example.  Most of you remember the time when we had the WWJD logo on bracelets, tee shirts and plaques.  It stood for “What Would Jesus Do?”  We were to ask that question in regard to any circumstance that would come up in our lives.  We must come to the realization of how Jesus would respond when cut off in traffic, or how He would respond to a critical tongue or insult, or how would He respond in regard to future plans.  This might mean that our priorities will need to be adjusted.  While in Spain, we found that many in the country only worked for the fact that they will be able to go on vacation for a month.  The average Spaniard in 1984 only worked eleven months of any given yea rand the twelfth month was for vacation. No matter how long you had worked for the company.  Many people in the world live and work only with the vacation in mind.  We need to ask ourselves the question, “What would Jesus do when He says that the fields are white unto harvest.  When the farmer looks at a ripened field, he doesn’t decide to take a month off but gets that which is ripe into the correct storage containers while conditions are right.  To wait might mean to lose the crop due to rain or other circumstances.  When someone cries out for help you should not say, “Sorry.  Can’t do it now, I am about to leave on vacation.  Maybe next month would be okay.”  Praise God for being the prime example for us all to imitate.