Careful Living vs. Cautious Life

SCRIPTURE: Be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 5:15-18 NLT

THOUGHT: Sometimes I get a little sideways about another new safety rule, safety app, safety gadget, safety billboard, fine print instruction (don’t plug in unless using), and beep meant to goad us into doing it the way we ‘should.’ I think people who make these things up just don’t have enough to do. Our culture has become one that anxiously pursues safety, often trading God’s promises of security and spirit-filled liberty for a cautious life. There’s nothing wrong with being cautious, but when it becomes a god, we’re not really living in the freedom God intends.

I love how the Amplified version puts verse 15-16:  see that you walk carefully [living life with honor, purpose, and courage; shunning those who tolerate and enable evil], not as the unwise, but as wise [sensible, intelligent, discerning people], making the very most of your time [on earth, recognizing and taking advantage of each opportunity and using it with wisdom and diligence], because the days are [filled with] evil.

Careful living involves honor, purpose, courage, common sense, intelligence, discernment, and not getting mixed up with evil. Cautious life involves fear, anxiety, bondage, blind obedience, foolishness, and “acting thoughtlessly,” as Paul put it to the Ephesians. We are called to make the most of every opportunity, understanding what it is the Lord is asking of us even if the days are evil.

PRAYER: Help me to live carefully before you, oh God, not anxiously, fearfully, cowardly in bondage to the world and its systems.