DOES IT MATTER HOW WE LIVE OUR LIVES?

“Then Jesus said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will save it.’”  (Matthew 16:24-25)

As Christians, it does matter how we live our lives... Once we accept Christ into our lives to be our Savior, God through the Holy Spirit immediately begins working in us so that we will have the power to live for Him. However many Christians, including us, often find ourselves struggling to live righteously because instead of relying on God’s power, we try to change from our previous lifestyles on our own.

Properly living the Christian lifestyle may also be difficult to some because we are not fully seeking and thirsting after God with all our hearts. To live God’s way we would be forced to deny ourselves many of the things that we may enjoy. We would have to stop being self-centered and commit ourselves to following God, His Word and His commandments completely. We would not be able to just live for Christ sometimes or for only certain parts of the day, but all day, every day.

-- Danita Evangeline, Danae Mary Louise, Daniqua Grace, and Danyelle Elizabeth Whyte from their blog virtuousgirls.wordpress.com 

#4551

IT'S ALL ABOUT HIM

"And He died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf."  (2 Corinthians 5:15)

When I was in seminary, Dr. Lawson Stone preached a message in chapel that contained a simple phrase that has never left my heart and mind. In fact, it has become the defining phrase of my understanding about what life and ministry is all about: "It's not about you…it's all about HIM."

Oh, it sounds familiar to us all. We sing it in songs, old and new: "All for Jesus, all for Jesus, every day and every hour"…."Take my life and let it be, consecrated, Lord to Thee"…."It's all about You, Jesus, and all this is for You"… "Lord, I give You my heart, I give You my soul, I live for You alone."

But, as A.W. Tozer wrote, "Christians never tell lies…but quite often they go to church and sing them." The evidence of life so often reveals that our lives have actually become sanctified versions of the old life. [It's as if] the prodigal son comes home, gets cleaned up, and comes back to the father's house. But then he continues to make weekend trips to the faraway land, the land that symbolizes the journey away from God to the land of ME and what I want...

How easily we are deceived into living cleaned-up, religious versions of the self-centered lives that Jesus died to save us from in the first place!! Seek the Lord and ask Him to reveal this to you: Who is it really about? Is it you…or HIM?  

-- Dave Carroll, Missionary to Uganda


#4532

AN AUDIENCE OF ONE

According to Jesus, what other people think of me matters very little.  What God thinks, matters far more.  Pray in a closed room, Jesus said, where no one but your Father can see you, rather than in a public place where you might get credit for being spiritual.  In other words, live for God and not other people.  I keep clamoring for attention and achievement.  Jesus invites me to let go of that competitive struggle, to trust that God’s opinion of me is the only one that counts, ultimately.

"There are but two principles of moral life in the universe," said the mystic Madam Guyon, "one which makes ourselves, or the most limited private good, the center; the other, which makes God, who may be called the universal good, the center."  I could summarize my entire spiritual pilgrimage as an effort to move the operating center from myself to God.

I ask myself how my life would differ if I truly played to an audience of One, if I continually asked not "What do I want to do?" or "What would bring me approval from others?" but "What would God have me do?"  Certainly my sense of ego and rivalry would fade because I would no longer need to worry about proving myself to other people.  I could concentrate instead on pleasing God, by living in such a way that would attract people to Jesus’ style of life.

-- Philip Yancey in Rumors of Another World

#3977