Behold the Pattern

Borrowing the title from a tremendous book written by Goebel Music, Behold the Pattern, we need to constantly return to God’s word for instructions on how we live, worship, and serve our Heavenly Father.  It is easy if you turn on the news, or scroll social media, to be inundated with opinions and thought pieces on the way that people should live their lives. Perhaps it seems right to you to side with the protesters in Los Angeles. Or, perhaps, you’re on the side of the immigration enforcement officers. Persuasive arguments, from a human perspective, can be made by both sides for why the actions that they have undertaken are right and proper.     Pause for a moment in your thinking and consider the patterns that have been set forth in Scripture. For example, Noah was given a pattern to follow in the building of the Ark. Had Noah followed a pattern other than the one God had set forth, the outcome would have been drastically different. Keeping that in mind, consider if God has set forth a pattern for His people today.     As you consider this, look to the words of Jesus to the Pharisees and the Sadducees concerning the greatest commandment. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind … and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:36-40).     This is the pattern for our lives. Anything that falls outside of loving God, and loving our neighbor, fails to meet God’s standard

- Andrew Beasley serves as a minister with the Northwest Church of Christ in Greensboro, NC. He may be contacted through the congregation's website: https://nwchurchofchrist.com/about/