{"id":409,"date":"2019-02-04T17:30:34","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T00:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=409"},"modified":"2019-02-03T09:30:07","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T16:30:07","slug":"how-god-uses-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=409","title":{"rendered":"How God Uses Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align:center\" class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">[To follow <strong><em>The Ewellogy<\/em><\/strong>, please click on <strong><em>Leave a Comment<\/em><\/strong> above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: <strong><em>Notify me of new posts by email<\/em><\/strong>. If your comment is, &#8220;Notify me,&#8221; it won&#8217;t post publicly. If you don&#8217;t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> It&#8217;s always fun when I learn something new while teaching, and that&#8217;s exactly what happened at the <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=397\">ECO conference<\/a> last week as I was presenting the 6Ms&#8211;a list of ways to follow Jesus as presented in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vereinstitute.org\/resources\">Fruitfulness on the Frontlines<\/a> by Mark Greene. The book calls it a framework for fruitfulness:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Model godly character<\/li><li>Make good work<\/li><li>Minister grace and love<\/li><li>Mold culture<\/li><li>Be a Mouthpiece for truth and justice<\/li><li>Be a Messenger of the gospel<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The book makes the point that this list should NOT be taken as yet one more set of things to feel guilty about or add to our already too-long checklist. It&#8217;s designed rather as an encouragement as we consider the ways God can use us in our environments.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Often, we think only of the first and last items: of course, I want to ACT like a Christian, <strong><em>modeling Christian character<\/em><\/strong>, and that will give me an opportunity to be a <strong><em>Messenger of the gospel<\/em><\/strong>. For sure that&#8217;s true, but God uses us in many more ways than that. <strong><em>Work<\/em><\/strong> is very important, in and of itself, and I want to write more about that, maybe beginning tomorrow. It may be that our <strong><em>ministering grace and love<\/em><\/strong> will result in a kinder, gentler <strong><em>culture<\/em><\/strong> in our workplace, neighborhoods, our families, and even online. We all know the kind of posts that usually land on Facebook. In addition, I&#8217;m on NextDoor, which I had hoped would bring our neighborhood together. Instead, many observations posted by our neighbors are met with harsh criticism and put-downs by other neighbors (sigh).<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What did I learn while presenting this information? One of the pastors offered the observation that the 6Ms also could be seen as areas for growth, in which I will not be equally competent all the time. And I won&#8217;t be performing equally in all 6Ms every day. But I can look back over the day and see in which areas God was able to use me.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s nice. None of us is &#8220;omnicompetent,&#8221; as a friend of mine likes to put it. The 6Ms remind me that there is a variety of areas in which I can grow and serve. And that&#8217;s good news!<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Do everything without grumbling or arguing,&nbsp;so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky&nbsp;as you hold firmly to the word of life&#8230; (Philippians 2.14 &#8211; 16, NIV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s always fun when I learn something new while teaching, and that&#8217;s exactly what happened at the ECO conference last week as I was presenting the 6Ms&#8211;a list of ways to follow Jesus as presented in Fruitfulness on the Frontlines by Mark Greene. The book calls it a framework for fruitfulness: Model godly character Make &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=409\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How God Uses Us<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-6B","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}