How can I help you? Who do you ask?

Today's reflection comes again in part from the daily reading in the One Year Bible.

Colossians 4: ⁵ Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. ⁶ Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.

Paul is giving instruction about relationships in chapter 4. The relationships he talks about include family, workplace and here he is speaking to how the church should conduct itself with those outside the church. The two things that stand out to me in this brief passage are first: "making the most of the opportunity" Do we in the church see our encounters with those outside the church as opportunities? If so, an opportunity for what? Do we tend to view them as potential members? Do we look to the destitute and see an opportunity to show kindness to fulfill our obligation to love and serve? The last line of the passage gives us a clue to what Paul thinks the opportunity is, "so that you will know how you should respond to each person." Each person and every encounter is unique. We are to conduct ourselves with wisdom so we will know how to respond to each person. Here is the thing about wisdom. You can't get wisdom from a book or a seminar. We can gain knowledge from those sources, but wisdom has a different source.

James 3:17-18  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. ¹⁸ And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Jesus, when He walked this earth in flesh had the ability to respond to each person and each circumstance in the right way, giving each person what they needed for the time, making the most of every opportunity. Depending on the need He imparted grace, healing, truth, always responding to the real need of each person. Jesus was God in flesh. He said He only did what the Father was doing. John 5:19

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

That's the opportunity we have in each encounter we have with people. To join the Father in doing what He is doing in their lives. The wisdom to do that comes only as we learn to yield to and walk fully in the Spirit. Jesus says of the Holy Spirit in John 16

⁷ But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. ⁸ And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; ¹⁰ and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; ¹¹ and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.¹² “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³ But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. ¹⁵ All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

Notice it is the Holy Spirit's responsibility to convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment, His job not ours. He will guide us into all truth. All truth from the Holy Spirit, that sounds like wisdom to me.

In that wisdom, the truth from the Holy Spirit may I conduct myself today. May my speech be with grace, that I may make the most of every opportunity.

Heavenly Father Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.