What Are YOU Doing?

Last week, our church hosted a revival with Rock Solid Ministries (it was amazing). From the beginning, we were challenged not to be challenged, as it were, but to leave changed. In keeping up with this proposition, I have a challenge of change for you: what are you doing with the Salvation Jesus has given you? What are you saved from and what are you saved for? We were never meant to be saved for a cloistered life, quietly reading God’s word and becoming a better person in the process. In this sense, many of us view ourselves as a trophy on display, or a piece of art to be shown off.

Beloved Believer, we were saved with a purpose: to become like Jesus, to do as He did, and, as He told the apostles, even greater things than that. And Jesus was led by the Spirit. From His Baptism, we see in the Gospels that Jesus was led by the Spirit in to the wilderness, where He fasted and prayed, and was tempted by Satan. He was led by the Spirit in all of His endeavors for the Kingdom, in teaching, In healing and in connecting with others. He also led a life in perfect obedience to the Father. How often do we try and say “I love Jesus” and yet also try and be the Burger King, where we have it our own way? These two lifestyles are incompatible! If we love Jesus, we’ll be seeking to be like Him, which is to say, seeking to be obedient to the Father in every way. Jesus was perfect in love. He sought to please the Father, but He reached out to the poor, sick and outcast, calling them to repentance toward the Father and in to a full and abundant life. If we love Jesus, ought we not also to do the same? Shouldn’t we spread this good news of our Salvation to anyone we see? We were bought with a price, brought from death to life; shouldn’t we be showing the world the evidence of this purchase and resurrection?

So I ask again: what are you doing with your salvation? As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. I will do everything I can to be the spouse to the wife Jesus gave me, the Father that leads his children to a life like Jesus, and the neighbor to all, both in my capacity as preacher and as a fellow human, leading my family, friends and enemies to the Jesus who set me free and raised me from the dead. We’re only in this world a short while, let us, together, strive to use that time to give Jesus all glory, power and honor, that the world may see and know He is still in the resurrection business!

Romans 8:1-26

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.