Philippians 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. This verse is not a new verse to most people who have read the Bible before. For most people, the concept of people dying for Christ isn't new. The only thing is the idea of actually dying for Christ is new. Most Christians want to live out a normal life with God in the middle somewhere each day; but the truth is that we need to live a life where God is the Begining, middle, and end of our day. To live is Christ. We must live a life for Him. Most of us struggle putting that concept in our minds and using it but that is the reality.
What if God calls you to be a missionary where you might get killed, or calls you to throw away your plans for Him. James 4:13-15 Come now, you who say, " Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. " Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that." Now it isn't wrong to make the plans but sometimes God wants us to do something else for Him; mabey to die for Him. Are you ready for that?
You must die for Christ every day, putting down your desires and following His commands.
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2 comments:
Amen to that. Great Post!
I think that beyond living for God is living WITH Him.
Personally, I get so caught up in living "for" God and doing all the works that I often forget to simply BE in His presence. Am I denying the importance, urgency, or vitality of your claim? Far from it. As a church, our love has definitely grown cold. And God calls everyone to go deep.
But I think that living with God is as hard as living FOR God. Because we can say, "Oh, God, I give THIS up and THAT up for You. I choose to do this and that and everything else for You," but how much harder is it to simply be? to simply LOVE and BE LOVED?
Some might say it's easy. But I know for me, it's very hard. Because every day, the world tells me that God cares more about my works than about my heart.
I guess the way I see it is basically as Mary and Martha-- to live WITH and to live FOR [respectively]. When living WITH God, you spend your time at His feet in adoration, learning, growing, searching, loving. When living FOR God, you do all these things for Him-- cleaning, growing, building His kingdom. And while that's not wrong, I think that even above building the Kingdom is the love and worship and living WITH our God.
I think there's a balance to be struck-- the tricky part is finding it.
I definitely agree that the time is coming for the dormant church to wake up and rise on its feet, though. And I believe the time is now. : )
ANYWAY, I actually came to reply to your comment since anyone who's so gracious as to leave one ought to get some communication in return. : )
When I said, "We demand God pay for the sin He wrought by making us with free will, potential, and life. We demand God pay for His wretchedness when He gave us thought, reason, and logic," I was referring to the mentality of many non-believers who believe that it's God's fault the world is this way because He created it full of sin and faulty. Basically, it's God's fault we're sinners is what they believe. And they believe that He knowingly made us faulty, born to fail, and thus our shortcomings are HIS sin and He SHOULD pay for what He's done.
It puts all the responsibility of our mistakes on Him. But the beauty of Grace is that all the responsibility was put on Him even though it was never His fault. So, I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't saying that we, as Humanity, love God and demand Him.
Far from it. We demand He die for sins He never committed.
And the absolutely beautiful, tragic, and incredible part is that He did.
An irony exists in that God has granted us a gift we can so little truly appreciate.
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