Christlikeness

Today I visited my friend's church Redeemer Presbyterian, which is on 68th Street and Lexington. The church is doing a series of sermons about the life of David, and they had a guest pastor today who was giving the sermon. The message comes from 1 Samuel 16:1-13, and it's about God commissioning Samuel to anoint one of Jesse's sons as King. The significance of that scripture is that out of Jesse's 8 sons, David was the least likely, in appearance, to be king. His brothers were bigger than him, and they had the stature of a person you'd want to protect you. However, when the sons were presented before Samuel, God let him know that it wasn't any of the older 7, but that David was the one. The message was about how God seeks our heart and not our outward appearance, and about the importance of character.

The pastor then spoke about how when you're in a relationship with someone for awhile, your characteristics starts to rub off on one another. He acknowledged that he's from Georgia, but speaks with a mid-western accent. And that's attributed to being married to a woman for 15+ years who's from St. Louis, Missouri. He ended with saying how maybe the strategy of Christians reaching their goal (being more Christlike) should be repositioned. Maybe the focus shouldn't be directly on being like Jesus, but more so being with Jesus. Because if we're in a relationship with Him, His character will rub off onto us.