Walking the Talk

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

     Ephesians 4:1-3 says, “ I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,  With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;  Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

     Walking while on a ship in the ocean can sometimes be a challenge.  The larger the ship, the more the challenge.  The Atlantic ocean seemed to have more choppy waves causing the ship to go up and down and then to roll to the sides.  I had to adjust how to walk and then to get what was called, “My sea legs.”  The Pacific seemed to be calmer yet the waves were still there and would cause  the ship to roll and t hen to hang  there for a while before it went back.    A large aircraft carrier could hang on one side for five seconds or more before starting to roll back tot he other side.  That meant  you were walking at an angel for that five seconds and then had t o change as the ship rolled to the other side.  The odd thing was that when you go into port and began to walk on solid ground, you felt  as if you were going to fall over.  Your  sea legs had to be replaced with land legs.

     The Apostle Paul spends a lot of time in the last  three chapters of Ephesians, speaking about how we “walk” in our  spiritual lives.  He has just given us  three chapters that describe our deposits in our heavenly bank account.  He t hen comes to the fourth chapter and begins with the big, “Therefore.”    Every time you see that word, it is going to throw you back to the preceding verses.  As a result of all of those blessings we cannot do anything else except walk in a “worthy” manner.  It is to be a walk that is worthy of the blessings that we have.   Paul goes on in the following chapters to speak about four other types of walks that the believer should have in their spiritual lives.  All of them are vital to our Christian demeanor.  If we have forgotten what a worthy walk should be, Paul goes on to define it in verses two and three.  He includes lowliness and meekness with longsuffering and forbearing one another in love. This was a new way of living for the new Christians whether they were formerly Jews or Greeks.  It is just as new in our culture today.  Christianity focus on others while our culture  tends to focus more on self.  It is interesting to note that  new words are added to the dictionary because t hey have become popular in usage.  One of those words is “selfie.”  The high quality camera that comes with most “smart” phones makes it possible to continually t ake pictures of your self and then to post them on social media for all to see, admire and to make comments about how beaut iful you look.  In the sme time, people do not regard others with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.  It is just the opposite and is a sad reflection of life in many churches.  We can talk about sea legs, and land legs, but where are our “spiritual” legs?  Pr aise God for His  showing us how to walk the talk.