Thursday, September 4, 2014

Imitate

“Therefore I urge you, imitate me.” 1 Corinthians 4:16
“Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1

Many of you know me as a soccer fan but I am also a basketball fan too. I used to play basketball so much when I was in middle school and high school. I remember those days when on Sunday I would play basketball for hours and hours the whole daylong until the sun would set. I remember those weekday evenings when I would sneak out of personal study session (In Korea, education is very strict and competitive that schools had mandatory evening study sessions where students were forced to do personal studies at school. For me I was at school until 10 p.m.) just to play basketball with friends. On lucky days, we wouldn’t be caught by our teachers, otherwise we would be spanked pretty hard. Basketball was a boom in Korea in the 90’s when I was in school because of this one popular Japanese comic book called the ‘Slam Dunk.’ This series was a huge sensation to Korean boys like me. It inspired us to play ball. I remember studying the comic carefully to improve my basketball handling (dribbling) skills or my shooting form. I ‘imitated’ from the comic book for me to improve my basketball skills.

When I was a freshman in college, one of the required classes was a preaching class. I don’t remember that much from that class. But one of the few things I remember was that the professor told us to copy sermons from famous preachers. He was not teaching us to plagiarize. He wanted us to ‘imitate’ well-known speakers. That was one of the ways of improving our speaking skills.

Paul tells us to ‘imitate.’ And we must ‘imitate’ Jesus Christ. There is no shame in imitating Christ. That’s what Jesus wants from us. It will grow us to be like Him. Let us imitate.

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