No doubt, you’ve heard the old joke, “Did you stop beating your wife?” It is a yes or no binary question. If you say no, that means you still beat her. If you say yes, that means that you did at some time in the past. It’s an unanswerable question. My wife asks those unanswerable questions. She is a very vocal person, and she carries on an audible conversation with herself all the time. She’s very self-aware but not always aware of me. And it can become quite challenging because I never know when to answer her. Many times, I’ve had to dig myself out of those mistakes.
Aren’t we always aware of ourselves? Don’t we speak to ourselves more than to anyone else? I’m not confident that we are. Over the last few weeks, I’ve written be self-aware in several of my posts. This comment is not my opinion; it is what Jesus told us to do. In Luke 17:3, Jesus said, “Pay attention to yourselves!” Notice the exclamation mark.
Jesus is Emphatic
Our Savior’s statement is emphatic. It’s like what our parents said to us when we were kids. When we’d start to wander towards a busy street, they’d scold us with, “Watch out! Pay attention. You could’ve been run over!” We didn’t know what “run over” meant, but we knew we’d be on the wrong end of a switch if we did get run over. Sorry. Rabbit trail.
Many places in God’s Word warns us to be self-aware. Our world attempts to distract us and lull us into complacency—the best movies and music challenge Christians to let down our morality. We can overlook the immoral parts of the films that entertain us. The best-selling books elevate anti-heroes and vilify Christians or the Church – oh, those won’t affect us; we say we are strong.
Well, that small sound we hear amongst the noise in this world is the Holy Spirit yelling at us, “Pay attention! You’re going to get run over!!”
Image by Bob Dmyt from Pixabay
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