The prophet Ezekiel should really get our attention. If you are anything like me you find yourself praying, God use me, show me what to do. Of course God says something different back to me, ” it isn’t what I want you to do it is what I want you to be, I’ll do the doing through you.”
You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards…
New Living Translation (Eze 5:7). Tyndale House Publishers.
Yes, God has called us into relationship with Him and into His family, but much more than that, He has assigned us with family responsibilities. This is what it means to be “called by God”. Have you determined what your role in the kingdom of God is?
When I was a child growing up in Port Clyde, Maine in the 1940’s and 1950’s, I had family chores which when carried out benefitted my father, mother, and brothers. But just as importantly, benefitted me. I learned self-discipline, I learned team play (each family member had their own responsibilities benefitting all family members), I learned satisfaction of completing tasks, I learned to do my chores well because others were depending on me doing that, and I learned to thank and complement others for the things done which benefitted me.
God chose the small and insignificant people of Israel to become a nation to represent Him before all other nations, that those nations and people might come to know God. Everything God does on earth is done through people.
Israel kept failing to be what God had called them to be. In Ezekiel 5, the prophet is calling Israel out for their failings. Chapter 5 describes the judgments to fall on Jerusalem and God’s people because “You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you” and I might add to the standards I have given you to live by.
We are called to be salt and light to the people around us. If the people around us do not see the light of God through our daily lives, then we have lost our saltiness, the flavor of God is gone from us, and He isn’t being glorified through our lives. God has very strong words for His’ people that find themselves in this condition (they are fit neither for the land nor the dunghill).
We had better not count on relationship with God as enough to keep us from falling away if we fail to fulfill the responsibilities of that relationship. Israel did that and the judgments of God overtook her.
Truth Told 
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