The New Life is a Life of Holiness. (Part 1)

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We come to Jesus for many reasons: Perhaps we see our life is a wreck and we need Him to save us from our poor choices. Maybe we see the direction of our lives and realize that we are separated from Him, eternally lost, facing an eternity in hell. It is true that Jesus came to extend the invitation promised in John 3:16.

““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 ESV.

We come to Jesus longing for safety from hell, but that safety is not the totality of why Jesus extended the invitation to a relationship with Him. We are to become like Him. The question then remains, what is Jesus like?

He is Holy. He is set apart by His sinlessness, His purity, His perfection.

“but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”” 1 Peter 1:15-16 ESV

Reading these words may seem like an impossibility. It may seem that God has set the bar too high for us to jump. Let me assure you,God’s commands are for our good and for His glory!

Sin is like a cancer to our soul. It eats away and weighs us down with death, darkness, and destruction. God knows that the only way we can truly experience all His goodness and all of His life is for us to be like Him, free of sin!

He wants us to not only experience the assurance of salvation free from fear of punishment and hell. He wants His life to be flowing through us, His holy and pure life, free from the destruction of sin!

We may see this as nothing but impossibility. Because we know how badly we fail time and time again. Here is where the good news comes in.

We know that Salvation that gives us the assurance of eternity with God is free! Jesus paid the price. He did it all! Holiness that makes us more and more like Him, free from sin, is not what we conjure up and work on our own. Jesus works this within us when we give ourselves to Him 💯. He does it all!!

“For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”Philippians 2:13 NLT

There is more to be said about this. For today I want to encourage you to ask God to show you what all this means in your life.

(To be continued…)

The New Life is a Life Cleansed From Sin

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A few weeks ago I introduced the topic of the New Life. This is the life that Jesus suffered, died on a cross, and then rose from the grave so He could give it to us. It is a life of freedom from the chains of sin and darkness. It is a life no longer marred by the emptiness of our sinful choices to follow ourselves and our own way. It is a life full of God’s love.

We come to God well aware of our need for forgiveness. It is plain to see how short we have fallen of His holiness- His purity, His goodness. We know we have done wrong. We have the precious promise that when we ask for His forgiveness, He will forgive. BUT there is another part to that verse. He will “cleanse.” To cleanse is “to purify; to make clean; to remove filth” Webster’s 1828 Dictionary.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 ESV

God’s promise is not only for forgiveness, but to make us clean- free of sin! This enables us to be like Him, the very thing for which He created us.

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

1 John 1:5-7 ESV

There are many who come to God wanting to accept the forgiveness He offers, but they neglect to walk as one who has been cleansed. They walk away from a time of asking forgiveness for their sins unchanged because they simply want to be free from the guilt they feel for the wrong that they have been done. But our God wants us to walk free from SIN that caused the guilt and darkens our life with its impurity. He longs to cleanse us! The question is “Do we desire to be cleansed from sin?” If we do, He gives us the power to walk free from the slavery of our sinfulness. May we not only accept His forgiveness, but walk as those who have been set free from our sin! May we live as those who are cleansed from our sins and full of His life and light!

Jesus Breathe on Me

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“And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
‭‭John‬ ‭20‬:‭22‬ ‭NIV‬‬

There is a scene in the movie “Narnia” where the lion, Aslan, breathes on a hard and stony statue that Mr. Tumnus had become. The breath of the lion caused the hardness to melt and Mr. Tumnus to come to life. This hardness and stoniness came about by Edmond’s sin.

“Narnia” was written as an allegory or a story example for the real truth. This truth is about Jesus, whom the lion Aslan represents. After Jesus resurrected from the dead, He appeared to His disciples, the ones who abandoned Him in His worst hour. They were the ones who failed Him miserably. They were behind locked doors in a room hiding in fear when Jesus appeared. Jesus did not spend extensive time recounting how they had failed. Instead He breathed. It is His breath that melts hearts of stone. Jesus’s breath is life! He also instructed them to receive the Holy Spirit, the power from on high the very wind and fire from Heaven.

Jesus still breathes on us today. Each of us are hardened by our sinful choices. Each of us are dead inside. There is only one way to come to life! That is to allow God, Yahweh, to breathe on us! We need to receive the promised Holy Spirit to live within us. He longs to change us from death to life! But we must choose!

Every choice we make to follow our own ways will only lead to death, darkness, and destruction. It is only when we stop living our lives after ourselves and allow Jesus to breath His breath of life upon us that we can be transformed. We can live the life free of the sin that hardens and destroys us.

May our hearts cry be, Jesus breathe on me! I receive Your breath of life!

No Longer Adrift: Connected to Him

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“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” 2 Corinthians 5:20 NIV

The feeling of disconnection from God is miserable. I have lived there more than once in my life. It is like being adrift in a boat on a sea of turmoil. The winds and waves of life stir fears within your heart that are paralyzing.

I also know how it feels to live connected to God. The peace, security, and love that overflows in your heart. Storms are simply storms. They have no power over you when you know you are held closely and connected to the One who with the words “Be still” can calm any situation that comes.

This morning when I read the words of this verse the last section lit up inside of my heart, “Be reconciled to God.”

To be reconciled is to be called back into union. It is to be reconnected to God.

Why live disconnected and adrift when God holds out His hands welcoming you in? Why allow the storms of life to paralyze and plummet you?

God offers us connection to Him. He desires for us who have been far away to become close. But we must be willing to allow Him to draw us in! He wants us united to Him, but we must be willing to give up our own way for His. Remember…our own way stinks!

Be reconciled to God! Be reconnected to Him!

The New Life is a Life of Forgiveness of Sin!

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Confession of sin and repentance of sin is like frequent weeding of a garden.

Sin is not a fun topic. In fact, I believe I’ve been harping on it a lot lately, but there is a reason for that. It is not to make us feel bad. It is to gain an understanding of how dangerous sin is. The simple fact is God hates sin. He hates it because He knows sin separates us from Him. He longs for us to be connected to Him. Sin makes us unhappy and miserable. Because the one thing we were created for was to be connected to God through relationship. Sin keeps us disconnected. We will never know our life’s purpose when we are bound and tied up in sin.

There is joy in coming to God with our sin and confessing it. There is joy in receiving forgiveness.

“Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight!” Psalms 32:1 NLT

There is joy in turning from sin and loving God with all our heart all, our mind, and all our strength, displaying that love with our obedience to all He has commanded. (Matthew 28:20)

In fact, recognizing our need to be free of sin, coming to God regularly and asking God to show us anything that is not of Him within our lives so we can be close to Him is imperative.

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalms 139:23-24 NIV

Confession of sin and repentance of sin is like frequent weeding of a garden. It keeps the sin, that destroys the goodness of God growing in us, from taking root and reaping havoc in our lives.

God’s desire for us is freedom from the slavery of sin!

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 NIV

The New Life is Loving and Being Loved by the Savior

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Growing up in a Christian home, my parents taught me that loving Jesus was a good thing. It is easy to have the understanding that loving Jesus and being loved by Him is good! Sometimes there is a lack of understanding of what exactly loving Him and being loved by Him means.

In order to understand what being loved by Jesus means, we need to understand why He came. The Bible talks about that reason:

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”” Matthew 1:21 NIV

Jesus’s mission was to save us from our sins. Why is this so important? Sin destroys! As Andrew Murray said, “Sin is the cause of our misery.” If you are miserable inside, there is sin inside of you! You can be free!

The problem is we come to Jesus wanting to get relief from the misery of our sin or its destruction, but not necessarily the freedom from sin itself.

Jesus loves us dearly. He wants us to experience what He freely offers, a relationship with Him. This relationship will not only free us from sin. But it requires one thing that we often find very hard to do because we try to do it on our own. This requirement is that we love Him in return. That sounds easy enough… but to love Him is to give ourselves entirely, totally and completely to Him.

This means one more thing- obedience to Him and His Word.

Jesus said:

““If you love me, keep my commands.” John 14:15 NIV

Obeying Jesus commands is hard if we do it on our own and in our strength. It is only when we depend on Jesus that we can live free. How do we do this? We come to Him knowing He loves us. We want to love Him and obey. We give ourselves fully to Him each and every day. Surrendering our thoughts, desires, and wants to His thoughts, desires, and wants that we see in His Word. He empowers us by the Holy Spirit to live Free and to love Him fully.

“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 NIV

He loves us, we love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is our obedience to what He says.

An Undivided Heart

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“Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭86‬:‭11‬ ‭NIV‬‬

This word of this song have rocked my world, and the verse it quotes just so happens to be the WOW (Name of Bible Study I attend) verse of the week.
What do I desire more than anything? Or maybe I should say “who” do I desire more than anything me and my ways or God and His ways?
Do I love Him enough to obey Him no matter what? Or do I love myself enough to do whatever I please? When I gave Him my heart did I give Him all or do I reserve a part for me? Have I given Him a heart that is undivided?

The New Life is a Life of Surrender.

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I got married to Rich when I was 21. I had lived from the time I was 18 until I was 21 calling my own shots away from my parents and on my own. I did what I wanted, whenever I wanted to, and however I wanted. But when I stood at the altar to marry him and said “I do”… that was over. In order for my marriage to work I had to surrender to partnership. It’s kind of like a three legged race. I am connected to Rich. We have to run together, working together or our life together would fall apart.

I gave myself to him. He gave himself to me. It’s a surrender. Marriage isn’t a 50/50 thing that isn’t what works. It is me giving 💯 of myself to Rich and him giving 💯 of himself to me.

When we come to Jesus and receive His New Life. We enter into another relationship of surrender.

“And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord…”

2 Corinthians 8:5 NIV

In order for our relationship to work in our lives we have to give ourselves entirely, totally and completely to Him. Our days of doing what we want, when and how we want to have to end if we desire to have Him working in our lives. We have to surrender ourselves to Jesus 💯. In turn He gives Himself 💯 to us— His love, joy, peace, guidance, etc… We come to Him saying “All I have and all I am is Yours.” He in turn will fill us with His New Life.

This surrender is not something that only happens at an event or a special time spent praying at an altar of prayer in church. This surrender is required from the moment our eyes pop open in the morning until they close in rest at night. (Actually through the night too.) It is 24/7.

It is like we are in a three legged race with God, connected. But in order for us to win we must stay in step with Him and yield to His guidance. We have to be attentive to His every move. This surrender becomes a reality as we come to know Him. We know how He is going to move by spending time in His Word and prayer.

If your life isn’t working like you thought it should be after you’ve prayed and asked God to help you, check your surrender.

Does God have all of you, 💯? Are you surrendered to Him every moment of every day?

The New Life is a Life of Knowing God!

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We can KNOW God! That statement seems to be a little out there if we only look at it through our human eyes, but it is so very true. In fact, to KNOW God is what we were made for, anything short of KNOWING Him will end in death and eternal separation, or hell.

What is KNOWING God? It is first hand experiential KNOWING. It is living a life of intimacy/ closeness to Him. This is the kind of KNOWING that Jesus spoke of:

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” John 17:3 NIV

This KNOWING is the New Life. It is eternal life. It is the kind of life we all long for and desire. But it will not be realized within us unless we allow Jesus into our lives. If we keep Jesus at a distance and are content to just do good deeds or live a “good” life, or be a good person, we really don’t know Him.

Jesus warned us of us “trying to be a good person” on our own without really knowing Him.

“”Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Matthew 7:21-23 NIV

What a sad outcome to a life! They never KNEW Jesus! The truth of the matter is what we do to make ourselves feel and look good are described as a bunch of “filthy rags” in comparison to a Holy sinless God. (Isaiah 64:6)

That is why if we want to experience the New Life that is eternal life, we must know God through a close and personal relationship. We must come to Him, believing in Jesus His Son, asking Him to forgive us for and cleanse us of our sinful lives. We must invite Him to come and live in us so we can KNOW Him. Then the New Life of knowing Him will grow. As we seek Him in His Word, He will change us to be what we needed to be all along. As we pray to Him, listen to Him, and OBEY Him, we will KNOW Him!

That KNOWING produces the promise in us New Life that is eternal. We will live connected to Him with no fear of eternal separation from Him or death in hell because we will KNOW our God and and His eternal life!

The New Life is a Life Free From the Power of Sin.

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We were created to be united or one with God. Before Adam and Eve chose their own way above God’s way, they were one with Him. Sin entered our world when they made the choice to follow themselves and they were separated from God. That separation is death.

“And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”” Genesis 2:16-17 NIV

With death, or separation from God, comes darkness and destruction into our lives. That is because God is the author of Life itself. We cannot truly LIVE apart from Him.

Sin Destroys!

For those of you who have attended an Ashes to Beauty Encounter weekend, the testimonies of sin’s destruction, in the lives of the women, are proof of that point. Truly if we examine ourselves, we can see it in our own lives. Anytime I have chosen my own way instead of God’s, I have experienced the misery of sin in my life. That is why God repeatedly warns us of what exactly sin is.

“The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Galatians 5:19-21 NIV

God does not speak of sin because He wants to be a cosmic killjoy. He want us to walk free of sin so we can be close to Him, united to Him once again.

Although the consequences of our sins are painful, we often find ourselves not willing to repent from them. Because the truth is, we love to sin. We want to do our own thing. We do not want to obey God. I say this from my own personal experience. I had to get my fill of sin in order to see how desperate I was for the New Life that God offered to me.

I needed to see that the fruit of this New Life that is empowered by the Holy Spirit, the very things I longed for, could be in me.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

I had to get sick of it! I had to get desperate! That is when I determined that I needed to love God with all my heart, mind, and soul. That is when I repented from my sin and asked God to cleanse me and empower me to live free! That is when I began to experience the New Life in it’s abundance!

Are you where I was? When you look deep inside, are you living in peace, joy, and love? Or is your heart full of fear, anger, rage? Do you run to God with life’s ups and downs or are you trying to deal on your own and in your own way? This can be through self effort, self medicating- alcohol, drugs, self help books, etc. Are you sick of it?

There is New Life in Jesus that frees us from the power of sin!