Imitate With Our Best Effort

“Imitate With Our Best Effort”

By Zach Wood

Ephesians 5:1-2 (NLT)

“Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are His dear children.  Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered Himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.”

We do a lot of imitating in life, don’t we? When we’re kids, we imitate those who are older as we learn new skills and learn to do new tasks.  As we grow older, we continue to learn as we get new jobs and study and watch others do various things we’d like to aspire to do. 

We spend a lot of time in our life imitating what other people do so that we can be better in our jobs.  We can sure learn to do things on our own, but we need some sort of detailed instructions from others at times when learning on our own isn’t enough.  It’s important to learn from other people.  We can always learn a new way to do something we’ve done the same way for so long.

Sometimes we like to try to imitate people to make others laugh.  You and I have seen probably many comedy routines where people do their best to sound like a popular actor and we can be really amazed at how well they sound just like the person.  How did they do that? They practiced and practiced.  They tried over and over and over again to imitate that person.

Just like we need to learn from others in how to do certain tasks in life, most importantly, we need to learn and imitate what Christ did.  There is no greater example to imitate.  Often times, we make excuses that it’s just so hard to follow Christ and do exactly what He did and treat others as He treated people.  When it gets hard to imitate Him and we want to give up, just remember all He went through to give Himself as a sacrifice for us. 

How hard do you and I work daily to imitate Christ as we communicate and work with others?  How much effort do we really put into being just like Christ?  This is not a new concept to any of us, but a great reminder that we should put in our best effort daily to be just like Jesus.  After all, He put in His best effort to give us life.