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I imagine that all of us had someone we looked up to when we were young. They were the ones that we would try to imitate. For young boys, it usually begins with wanting to be like their dad, and for young girls, their moms. Then, at least for me, I discovered television. On television, there were fictional characters that caught my attention. My best friend and I would watch and imitate these characters because, well, they were so cool and were the heroes. For example, we watched TV shows like Starsky and Hutch and The Wild, Wild, West. Then came the heroes in the movies-James Bond, Dirty Harry, Luke Skywalker, and Han Solo. These were all heroes I thought were cool, and my friend and I would use our imaginations to pretend to be them. Who am I kidding? Even today I still think those characters are cool. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be Dirty Harry and challenge people to “make my day”?

The Word encourages and challenges us to imitate the right things and people. In 3 John verse 11, we read these words: “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God.” The Holy Spirit gives us a directive on whom and what we should imitate and whom and what we should not imitate. Growing up, I’m sure my parents were not always entirely pleased with who I tried to imitate. I guess pretending to be Spider-Man and trying to swing off the roof of the house wasn’t the greatest idea, but man, was it fun.

The Holy Spirit tells us to imitate that which is good. Of course, Jesus is the ultimate one we should try to imitate. This may seem like an impossible task but look around and find people who are trying to imitate Christ and hang with them. Begin to take on some of their spiritual characteristics, and we will find ourselves becoming more like Jesus. This speaks to the extreme importance of the church. We will imitate the ones we are with the most.

On the other side of this coin, the Holy Spirit tells us what not to imitate. We are not to imitate evil. He then tells us that if we imitate evil, we have not seen God and have not experienced God. The point is, we will imitate who and what has the greatest impact on our lives. Good will imitate that which is good, and evil will imitate that which is evil. Simple but very profound.

We must choose to imitate good; we must choose to imitate Christ.