Get A Life Before A Relationship!
We are complete positionally when we make peace with God by believing in Jesus. It’s an accomplished work — it’s done.
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Live Blog: Get A Life Before A Relationship!
Last week we talked about Saving Power, looking at the story of Zacchaeus and Christ’s mission to seek and save what was lost.
This week we move the thought on, with our scripture reading: Romans 5
Colossians 2 says that “you also are complete through your union with Christ”. We are not complete by ourselves. We are not complete because we have a relationship with someone, like a marriage. You’re not complete because you have stuff either. It’s only through our union with Christ that we are complete.
We are complete positionally when we make peace with God by believing in Jesus. It’s an accomplished work -- it’s done.
Experientially, however, we are in the experience of walking into that completeness day by day. And as long as we’re on the way, that’s good. We’re not there yet but must be moving in the right direction.
It is access that brings us to the position of completeness. It is through submission that we truly find freedom.
What was the orignal sin? The act was disobedience, but the sin was idolatry. As a lawyer, you don’t look at the act so much as the motivation behind the act. Murder may be the act, for instance, but self-defence or planned murder are two different motives.
The motive inside of Adam and Eve was idolatry -- seeking meaning, security and personal identity in someone or something else other than God. Eve swapped God as the source for the tree as a source. They moved from truth to a lie.
When idolatry took place, there was a consequence. As we read in Romans 5, “by one man’s death, sin reigned.” Individual death, and from one man, society experienced chaos.
When God breathed into Adam, He imparted ten things to Adam which we participate in. One of these was God’s gregariousness -- His social capacity. God is social! When you understand this, you begin to understand things like honour, respect, submission, love -- all of these are social.
Being social, there are 5 areas of relationship:
- With God
- With Self
- With People
- With Things
- With Places
God originally wanted us to have a health relationship with all of these things -- but because chaos entered the world, these are corrupted. We have a corrupt relationship with God, ourselves, with others, with things and with places.
We can seek to find meaning and identity in ourselves -- “I’m my own person” -- but this is idolatry. The serpents real lie to Eve was that she would become God -- it was making God in the image that we want Him to be, rather than us in the image of God!
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Saving Power
Our impact and significance on others must not be motivated by the advancement of self or selfish gain but in our impact on others for our God!
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Live Blog: Saving Power
Reading: Luke 19: 1- 10 [ Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.]
The Word says Jesus came to seek and save the lost -- lost meaning those disconnected from their Creator, their God, Their Heavenly Father. Jesus came to seek and save -- this was His mission -- and His mission set His attitude in life toward everyone He came into contact with. When you read the Gospels you don’t see Jesus fasting and praying and striving for God to lead Him to the right people -- waiting for some weird mystical experience that would lead Him to ‘an intense God appointment’. Rather we see Him going through His daily life with an attitude of seeking and saving. This lead Him to people like Zacchaeus. And although the religious establishment wasn’t happy with Jesus associating and befriending Him -- with them Zacchaeus never featured and was written off / never stood a chance -- Jesus commentary on what He did was ‘I came to seek and save’.
A mission that set His attitude which set His thoughts and behaviour. It established the way He related to Himself, God and people. Relationally He became a winner -- not because He wanted to be known as Mr Nice Guy for some egotistical motive, but because His purpose was to show people the Father and further to introduce them to the Father -- He Himself being the Peace-Maker. Our impact and significance on others must not be motivated by the advancement of self or selfish gain but in our impact on others for our God! Everyone that came to Jesus He lead them to the Father. Our goal is be like Jesus.
John 3: 16-17 says [For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He even gave up His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish - come to destruction or be lost - but have eternal, everlasting life. For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge - reject, condemn, or to pass sentence on the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.]
Small people keep people around them small thereby containing themselves to live in an ever smaller world. Negative, critical people have to always reduce everyone around them; they’re always fault-finding so that they can bring people down to their level so that they can feel good about themselves. Whenever people treat you badly all they are doing is projecting their own unhappiness onto you.
The German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book -- Cost Of Discipleship wrote: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Small people are too full of themselves to give themselves to anything beyond themselves.
Romans 12:18 [Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.]
When hurting people come to Christ and get healed and know what it is to be healed then as healed people they can in turn inspire the hurting to get healed too! Inject Life into every situation, every meeting, every conversation you have -- let it frame your everyday world. Instead of defaulting to the atmosphere in the room or the pressure of your daily circumstances take responsibility for the atmosphere in your life -- your home -- church. You are an agent of change and you can change the atmosphere. Jesus did it so well that not even death could dominate the atmosphere when He entered it. Just His presence lifted the room.
People are electrifying- some light up a room when they enter it and others when they leave -- which one are you?
You will come into every person’s life no matter how brief for either a reason; a season; or a lifetime -- whichever it is make it a positive one. As a believer your goal should be to laugh often, to keep smiling, be warm-hearted, genuinely friendly, endearingly mischievous and free-spirited. The River’s overarching mission is the increase in our generation and culture of the love of God and neighbour.
Love God -- Love people!
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Live Blog: The Power of Hearing
Mark chapter 4 is a parable about hearing -- The soil that the parable talks about is a metaphor for our hearing. What you hear and how you receive it affects how you process the information you receive and what you do with it .
[Romans 10:17]says faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God! So the Word of God in the first instance imparts faith to us -- it is the source of our faith; it also communicates with our faith growing and strengthening it; and finally it is the perfecter of our faith -- causing those things God promised to us in His Word to manifest as our own.
God and as human beings necessitates the development of our hearing.
- Communication is the Basis of Life.
- Exchange is the Process of Life.
- Balance is the Key to Life.
- Agreement is the Power of Life.
A poem by Dorothy Law Nolte Ph.D.(1924 -- 2005), that was crafted on deadline for a Torrance newspaper in 1954 became — without her knowledge — a child-rearing anthem that parents posted on refrigerators around the world.
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.
Unless you go to God’s word concerning his nature and his character, you will hold a lot of things against God. Because you have been let down before, your approach God with the same attitude that you approach people who have let you down and/or hurt.
God is committed to his own nature, his own character and to his word. He says in [Jeremiah 1:12] that He watches over His word to perform it.
You can live under blame and always be defensive in your relationships. You can live under guilt and attach yourself to a skewed Christianity -- e.g. Live under the doctrine of doing penance all the time.
So many people ask God where are you but that’s unscriptural because God is always present and He says in [Hebrews 13:5] that “He will never leave you nor forsake you.” So it’s better to ask, “Lord why am I not aware of your presence in my life/in my day?”
Finally,
Jeremiah 1:11
[ Then the Lord said to me, “Look, Jeremiah! What do you see?” And I replied, “I see a branch from an almond tree.” 12 And the Lord said, “That’s right, and it means that I am watching,[c] and I will certainly carry out all my plans.”]
What did this image mean to the prophet? Because we don’t get it at all -- it means nothing to you or me but Jeremiah understood exactly in his relationship with God about the almond tree.
The almond tree is the first tree to blossom in the spring but it is the last to bear fruit in the summer. Jeremiah I called you and equipped you but this calling is going to require your commitment because only at the end of your calling will you see the fruit of your ministry.
The imagery is to strengthen us all along the way so that there is no quitting and no dropping out. Between the blossom and the fruit you are going to have to use your faith to sustain you.
Therefore God says to us: But he who endures to the end shall be saved. [Matthew 10&24/ Mark 13]
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