-Because NOW is the season for doing good. To everyone. ALL people. It is time, God’s appointed time, our God-given opportunity for spreading around the blessings of God. He has blessed us, shown us His incomparable breathtaking goodness in so many ways and specifically in His Son. And He fully expects us to be fully engaged in extending the knowledge and experience (and ultimately the celebration) of His goodness to all people everywhere. We do good. To others. We are (to be) the people of good deeds. We are people of the Good News, yes, but it is a both/and. We both share the Good News, AND we do good deeds. We should be caught up and living in them, steeped in them, swimming around and soaking in them, getting our little fingers all wrinkled and pruny from spending so much time in the true eternity pool of good deeds.
-So as God gives us opportunity, certainly while we have breath in our lungs we can praise Him and bless others with our words, with words of affirmation and encouragement and a good word about the Lord. Certainly as we have strength in our bodies we can meet needs as we encounter them in the lives of our neighbors, a helping hand here, an act of kindness there. It could simply be taking the time and going out of our way to talk with them, learn their name, take them a plate of cookies, listen to them and pray for (with) them. And especially, Paul says, we can and should be doing this for our fellow believers. It’s not rocket science. It is by no means beyond any one of us - when we are operating in the Spirit. This is the proof of our faith. This is how the world will know that we are truly following Jesus, when we demonstrate His love for one another. This is the true expression and overflow of God’s Spirit in and through our lives, when we are rising up and out of our fleshy propensity for me-first living, out of our native impulse to look out for number one. When was the last time you did something good for a fellow believer? Make it a point to do that today. Ask the Lord, ask Him to give you the chance to do good to someone today, to show off His goodness to another. And turn this into a habit, one where again you can totally be swimming around in these good deeds, so much so that it's almost as if your fingers are getting all wrinkled and pruny for the effort. If necessary you might need to find a local assembly where you can actually begin to do good to believers on a regular basis. This is where the rubber meets the road.
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