Get a
Life!
The Life
of a
Jesus follower
I'm indebted to Pastor
Vance Fossum for focusing on "the life" of the Jesus follower in his 27 May 2001
sermon...precipitating these notes:
- All humans are
created for God's good pleasure...to glorify God...having been created with a potential "life"
and with God-given talents.
- All persons are God-desired to be Jesus
believers, indwelt by the Holy Spirit & saved for an eternity with God, the only
guaranteed (Acts 4:12) way to eternal
salvation...confessing your agreement that Jesus died to save mankind from the sin penalty of death for failure to lead
lives of perfect obedience to God. Some will "believe; some
won't!
- As a believer & follower, you already
have an empowered life in progress (in process, never finished on Earth)...no longer a
potential life. The Gospel...good news [here].
- YOUR individual life "game-plan"
was created for you by God, the Father, before the creation of the world (Jeremiah 29:11;
Ephesians 2:10). See and appreciate how men & women & all of us are different
[here].
- You really "get it" upon accepting your
full salvation, already paid for by Jesus...by grace alone (Ephesians 2:8). [see how
here]
- This makes you a child of God and a joint
heir with Jesus of all the inheritance from God, under the authority (Matthew 28:18) of Jesus
[God's
authority system], having the powers of the triune God
on your side!
- Jesus accepts you then and there,
just as you are...no matter what & no matter the "baggage", no matter how
dirty/sinful!
- Upon truly believing in Jesus, you
become born
again (John 3:1-21) by the sudden internal indwelling of
the Holy Spirit; and that state of being saved is absolutely secure, no matter what happens
thereafter!
- You are no longer under the dominion of
Satan...satanic forces no longer have primary power of influential input over you in the
spiritual battles whose skirmish results define our days.
- You become endowed with one or more of the
"spiritual
gifts" (I Corinthians 12).
- Thereafter, you are indwelt with the power
to change and to flow out "fruits of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22-23).
- It is an "other-centered" life, not a
self-centered life.
- It is a life of service to others, not a
life of non-sharing accumulation for self and self interest.
- It is a life of giving away, not gathering
in.
- And, as in the prayer of Jabez (I
Chronicles 4:9-10), it is one desirous of huge blessings and enlargement of
[spiritual...used-of-Jesus] territory, while at the same time requesting the mighty hand of God
in our behalf that we might be kept from evil in order that we not cause pain in this
world.
We Jesus followers need to be focused on the life
in/with Jesus "up there" but continually living as witnesses for Him on mission "down
here"...involved in The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20)!
***give me your comments about this
page***
check out the Highest
TRUTH
(posted 28
May 2001)
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