HOW DO YOU PUT ON YOUR CLOTHES?

I realize that is a strange title. What exactly does it mean? Why would I ask such a simple question?

I'm not going to answer that for a minute. First, I'm going to tell you about a short book that I'm writing, which actually grew out of a Sunday School Lesson that I taught nearly a dozen years ago.

What comes to mind when you think of a wolf in sheep's clothing? Call me nuts, but I have always had the image of Warner Brothers' characters of Ralph and Sam. Do you remember the coyote and the sheep dog? They punch a clock every morning and then go about their own specific jobs. In nearly every episode, the coyote, Sam, zips himself up into the costume of a sheep in order to try to get into the herd. That's the image I have. From that I developed a Sunday School Lesson and from the Sunday School Lesson, I developed a short book, which I am still writing called "Sheep Don't Wear Wool... They Grow It."

That brings me back around to answering the reason for the question and the question itself. Right before I awakened this morning, I had a dream. In that dream, there was a very simple message. We can't put on the clothing and robes of Christ to become Christlike, just like anything other than a sheep cannot put on a wool costume and become a sheep. It is the same with everything we are and do in our daily lives. We can't put on a surgical gown, gloves and mask and start doing a coronary bypass surgery, simply because we're wearing the clothing. I brushed by the point of the question, but that's still not the answer.

In the case of becoming Christlike, we were promised the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and change us. Let that sink in a minute.

An apple tree produces apples because it has the make up of an apple tree within it. Somewhere in the sap of the tree is the nutrients necessary to make those apples grow to be large and sweet, small and bitter or some combination in between. The outer clothing of a sheep is not a wool costume, but actual wool which grew out of the nature of whatever genetic makeup causes sheep to grow wool.

When you do what you do; when you get out of bed in the morning and go through the ritual of going to your job or vocation; how do you put on your clothes? Do you put them on a someone who is adding something to themselves that is not a part of who they really are or are they an actual part of who you are?

How do you put on your clothes?