One morning recently, the Lord spoke to me, “Don’t tune your life to a changing standard.” My thoughts went to the way I used to tune my guitar in the old days. I had a tuning fork, which would produce a single “A” pitch when you’d strike it on something. Strike it, hold it to the guitar body, and tune the “A” string. Then tune the adjacent strings to the “A” string, then tune the “G” to the “D”, then the “B’ to the “G”, the “E” to the “B”. Should be in tune, right? Too often, the results were disappointing, especially if it was a low quality guitar. Often, you’d find that the first string you tuned all the others to, had shifted. The tuning fork was still right. The standard hadn’t changed. The overall tension on the whole instrument had changed as the strings were tuned, which changed the tuning of the original string.
What’s the standard for tuning our life? Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, the express image of the God the Father. The same, yesterday, today, and forever. Man changes. God doesn’t.
The old tuning fork method can be compared to the days before God sent the Holy Ghost to dwell in believers. Man didn’t have the teacher, the Spirit of Truth, who would guide them into all truth. (See John 16:13) So the best they could do was tune their lives to what they read, or were taught by other men, or follow the examples of others who were tuned to God. Problem is, even the best of those men fell short, and were themselves changing… some for the better, some not.
So please don’t tune your life to mine. I’m changing… from glory to glory. Fact is, I’m not perfect yet, in practical terms, so yeah, I NEED to change. Now, if you see something in me, that shows you what Jesus is like, by all means tune yourself to that Jesus you see in me. Kind of like Paul said, to be “followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” (1 Cor. 11:1) I am following Christ, and if you’re going to follow me, and do what I’m doing, you’re going to FOLLOW CHRIST. No matter how good I’m doing, I don’t want to tell anyone to “get in line behind me.” Tune to HIM!
Only when we’re all following Christ… tuning our individual lives to the standard that never changes… the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13), will we ever truly be correctly in tune with each other. That way, I can be in perfect tune (unity) with another believer in China, or South America, or Europe, and never have seen each other. The old way, tuning to others who are themselves in tuning, will lead to disappointment and confusion.
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