You paid careful attention to the way we lived among you, and determined
to live that way yourselves. In imitating us, you imitated the Master.
Although great trouble accompanied the Word, you were able to take great
joy from the Holy Spirit!—taking the trouble with the joy, the joy with
the trouble.
Deeply challenged by this paraphrase...'In imitating us, you imitated the Master'
How
many of us when we mentor, preach, teach or minister to others exhort others to imitate us as we imitate Christ? Commonly,
we try to remove ourselves from the equation and ask others to follow
Christ. We encourage others not to look at us because we are not perfect or we are weak. We
preach to others not to look at us, bypass us, look to Jesus instead.
Maybe this is our way of giving excuses not to work towards Christlikeness
and to exempt ourselves from setting the example and yet at the same time fulfil the duties or enjoy
the status of a preacher/teacher/minister.
But
we need to realize that people need a physical model/example to imitate
or follow. They need someone to look to in order to know that it is
possible to be like Jesus. They need to follow that physical example in
order to become. They need a good physical example of Christ's imitator
to imitate.
Therefore my personal prayer is that we, who are growing to be more like Jesus, will grow and live in a way whereby we can say or preach to others 'You
paid careful attention to the way we lived among you, and determined to
live that way yourselves. In imitating us, you imitated the Master'.
It is a tall order but by the grace of God, we can grow towards Christlikeness so that we can be the physical representative of Christ to others in the coming 2021.
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