What’s in Your Wallet?

1 John 4:1-6

 

 

No doubt this title brings to your mind visions of Samuel Jackson’s commercials for the Capital One Quicksilver cashback card. They are pretty memorable commercials, whether you ever get the card or not. That does bring up an interesting question. How do you decide whether you want it or not?

 

Maybe you already have too many cards to begin with and don’t need one more piece of plastic in your wallet. Or maybe you don’t want the cash back. Instead, you would prefer to add onto your frequent flyer miles.

 

Whatever your reason is, you made a decision based on certain criteria. You might even say that you ran it through your own personal test to see if it met your criteria.

 

That’s what John wrote about to the believers. He wrote that we should put messages and beliefs to the test; to make sure that the message you are hearing holds up to the truth of the Gospel.

 

“¹Dearly loved friends, don’t always believe everything you hear just because someone says it is a message from God: test it first to see if it really is. For there are many false teachers around, ² and the way to find out if their message is from the Holy Spirit is to ask: Does it really agree that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, actually became man with a human body? If so, then the message is from God.” TLB

 

Messages are normally communicated by word of mouth, but oftentimes messages are communicated by the written word (including texting, social media, etc.), body language, actions and even inaction.

 

This makes me wonder if our lives aren’t a message. And if that is true, what message are we communicating? What would happen if our message, that is our life, was put to the test?

 

So, like the commercial, the question comes to mind: What’s in your life? What message are you communicating?