Episode 340: I’m Talkin. . .Model

I’m Talking, episode 340 for October 20th, 2024.

This is Joel from the I’m Talking microcast, where I share my thoughts on a topic that has piqued my interest this past week.

This week, we’re talking model.

So the word model really comes in two forms.

There’s the noun version of the word or the verb version of the word.

And you understand what that means, a verb is action, a noun is a subject of a sentence or something like that type of word.

And I kind of thought of it as a noun is a representation.

So that is how I look at model, where the verb form of model would be to actually represent.

And so that would be something like, I am a representation of something in that it doesn’t take action to do that necessarily.

It just takes being.

So you might think of a model car as being a representation of a real car, and you really don’t get a verb out of that type of model.

But the other word then is to represent something in a form of action.

So you would say you’re like that thing, or you are modeling that idea, person, thing, whatever it may be.

And the world uses these differently than we might as Christians.

In the sense of the word model, there’s a lot of ideas in the world that say that is not important.

I’m my own person.

I don’t represent anyone else.

I’m not a picture of anything else.

I’m self-first.

It’s really self-centered.

It is me who’s most important to whatever it is that I want to do.

And being an example, so being the verb version of a model is not my responsibility.

It is something that other people put on me.

So the world wants to be left alone in essence from the word model, and therein lies the challenge for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

So here’s the difference.

As a Christian, we are called to do both of these definitions, a representation of and to represent.

The idea of a representation of that doesn’t necessarily call us to action would be the fact that we are God’s creation, that we live in his created world.

So we are a model of his creativity, a model of his ability to do things that are beyond our comprehension.

We in our just everyday existence portray who God is, and here’s the deal.

Even non-Christians do that.

They just don’t take it as a responsibility because they don’t want to be called into that kind of responsibility.

The other half of the word model or the other definition that takes action may be more difficult.

It actually is more difficult because we now are called to be like Christ.

And when we think of the word Christian, that’s what it means, little Christ or Christ-like.

And so we have to be, as Christians, model of the character of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And what does that mean?

Well, that means we have to love, we have to forgive, we have to show grace.

All the things that we get because we have chosen to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior.

And where does that start?

Well, I think it starts first in your family, to model his love, to model his forgiveness, to model his grace in your family.

And then those same attributes then expand out from there into the rest of who we interact with.

So it might go into our friendship circle, and then it would go maybe into the world circle, maybe it’s work.

And then just in our general everyday public life, what we do, who we are, how we’re made, how we react is a model of Jesus Christ.

And it may be the only Jesus Christ that some people see.

I know it sounds like a scary proposition, and it is a little bit, but we also know that when we accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, he gave us the power to be that model through the indwelling of his Holy Spirit.

Now we have to choose to live in that power so we can model Christ to the world in which we live.

Until next week, this is Joel from the I’m Talking Microcast.