Professional athletes are famous for their branding.  Those athletes who are considered ‘superstars’ are paid a lot of money by the sponsoring agency for sporting a particular brand.  Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors has been known for his connection to Underarmour sportswear.  Nike paid Michael Jordan a significant amount of money for sporting the Nike swoosh symbol on almost everything he wore, but especially his shoes.  There are other athletes who cash in on contracts with clothing companies to wear their hats, shoes, golf gloves, play with their tennis rackets which connects them with the company that brands them.

         Paul said to the Roman and Colossian churches — and to us as well — that, as God’s chosen people, we are supposed to clothe ourselves with Christ.  In other words, we are to dress head to toe in Christ’s wardrobe.  Since we represent Christ’s brand, we’re to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  And above all, clothe ourselves with love.  Clothing ourselves with Christ is not something we do when we enter the church on Sunday morning.  It’s a garment that we wear — a living garment of attitude, respect, honor, and love that we put on everyday telling those who see us that Christ is the one who has sponsored us, so we’re wearing his brand.  That’s the ideal role and goal for those of us who are awake, paying our debt of love to those who don’t know about our Christ.  We must remember that Christ paid a significant price for us to be a part of his brand.  Shouldn’t we wear the clothing of Christ as proudly as professional athlete’s wear their sponsor’s garments?  I doubt that they paid nearly the price to acquire their athlete’s support as Christ paid for ours.  Jesus paid it all!

• How do you work to wear and sport the wardrobe of Christ in your life?
• What areas of your life are still underdevelopment as you awaken to what God requires of you?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Loving God, while others choose their wardrobe based on the latest fashions, help me to “wake up and stay woke” to my responsibility to clothe myself in Your Spirit and love — a wardrobe that will never go out of style.

         A story shared by writer Clare Sheridan, a journalist for the New York World, once interviewed Mussolini, the Italian dictator:

What [she] remembered particularly was Mussolini’s parting advice on what it took to succeed in life. “Above all, keep your heart a desert!” the dictator told her.[1]

I can only presume that Mussolini was sharing what he thought were words of wisdom.  But how wise is it to consider one’s heart a barren place where the scarcest of resources are available; where it’s difficult to support life, but is often understood as a place of struggle, a place difficult to live in because people often face intense heat, little water, scarce food, and isolation.  And if we are to take Mussolini at his word, then we must admit that there is nothing meek about his wisdom.  It is the exact opposite.  It is both assertive and overbearing, seeking to care for no one’s heart but his own.  It is filled with selfish ambition and lacks those gifts and graces necessary to live in harmony with others.

         For a person to awaken to the wisdom and mercy of God, they must acknowledge that wisdom from above is as James states it: first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.  If one refuses to accept life and wisdom in the green oasis of God’s grace, then they will remain asleep in the desert, perhaps without so much as a companion to share their eventual misery.

         God’s invitation for us to ‘wake up and stay woke’ is an invitation for us to live within an oasis of community where there is love, mercy, understanding, and the perpetual sharing of God’s love sincerely and unselfishly.  It is the life and wisdom that God calls us to when we wake up to the presence of God among us in Jesus Christ.

• Where have you noticed yourself or others living as if their hearts were in a desert?
• How do you believe your life as an awakened person in Christ may have worked to draw you or them out of the desert into the oasis of Christ’s love?
• When you consider the contrast of the desert and the oasis, how does ‘being led by still waters’ now add meaning to David’s Psalm?

[1] Citation: James R. Mellow, Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (Perseus, 1994), p. 202

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Gracious God, thank You for the gift of being awakened by You. Empower me to live within Your wisdom sharing a life of peace, gentleness, reason, mercy and sincere love with others.

         We sometimes sing a song we call “The Black National Anthem”.  Within the lyrics of the song are the words,

      “Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee;

      Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee,“

We sometimes miss the point that the world we live in can have an intoxicating effect on us.  We get drawn away into the world by peer pressure, the lust and love of money, the desire for privilege, power, and status.  And sometimes, the intoxicating pull on us by the world’s attraction can draw us away from the God we say we serve.  In our drunken state, we find ourselves becoming numb to the needs of those around us, drowsily moving through life unaware of those around us, singularly focused on whatever is pulling on us in the darkness of our lives, moving through life unprotected.

         But Paul calls upon us to live a sober lifestyle, not being pulled upon by those things that cause us to stray from the places where we first encountered God.  Paul insists that we shield ourselves from those worldly attractions by protecting our hearts of love with the breastplate of faith and using our hope of salvation as a helmet of protection to keep from being brainwashed by the world.  In a drunken state, it might be difficult to remember which is which.  But if we remain awake and sober, awake and ‘woke’ to the needs of our spirits as well as the needs of those around us, then, our salvation becomes a priority.  That’s when the love of Christ and what God’s done for us through him becomes our top priority, not just for our benefit, but also that we might pay our continual debt of love to our God and to those around us.

• What are some of the things in the world that you observe that make people drunk with the wine of the world and forget God?
• In what circumstances have you noticed people change once they’ve put on the breastplate of faith and the hope of salvation as a helmet of protection from the drunkenness of the world?
• How does this remind you to clothe yourself in Christ.

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Gracious Christ, strengthen me by the power of Your spirit to remain sober and awake that I might live to receive Your promised salvation through Jesus Christ.