So, please, be careful. Remember that, while God loves you, God ALSO loves everyone else. While God loves you, God doesn’t want you, and you alone, to have it all. When you GET that, when you get past the selfish desires of greed, you will live into a way that benefits YOU even MORE than your greed, and you will live in a way that benefits everyone around you. In other words, you will replace the ways of death with the ways of life…for you and for everyone else.
Jesus told us exactly what these studies about people regretting things at the end of life have revealed: being busy with things of the world is hardly justifiable; it is NOT the better part.
Well, I’m here today to remind you that THIS answer is not God’s answer. According to God, only by relationally ENGAGING people who disagree – even people who disagree to the point of seemingly working to make the world a worse place – only by engaging them can we do more than just pursue change but actually achieve real and lasting change, also known as the in-breaking of God’s kingdom here on earth.
Just out of curiosity, are there any among us who do NOT want to experience ALL these amazing things? They are within your reach, within your grasp. They are within the grasp of us all. The risen Christ made it possible thousands of years ago in a room with his disciples. The Holy Spirit continues to make it possible today.
The disciples’ sense of loneliness and isolation faded, to be replaced by a fellowship that regularly experienced the risen Christ’s presence and relatively quickly spread to the ends of the earth! The same can happen for us.
My friends, Jesus told us to “do this in remembrance of” him. Jesus told us to live differently from everyone else, to live differently than we already live, to live differently than we are inclined to live…all in remembrance of him. Each time you make a decision to live differently in this way, do so with Jesus at the forefront of your mind. Do so knowing that God is making a difference through you. Do so in remembrance of Jesus.
Which brings me back to the story I read during our Meditation Time this morning. We see God, we see Christ, in other people. And they see God, they see Christ, in us, especially when we act, when we live, doing the kinds of things Jesus did…meeting the needs of people, whatever those needs may be.
He was born. He lived a while. He made some friends and enemies. He died. I suppose you COULD summarize Jesus’ life that way…but if you did you’d be missing just about EVERYTHING important about Him. As Christians, we must do more to understand who we believe Jesus is…and we must do more to live in accordance with who we SAY Jesus is. Because, even the slightest nuance in how you live impacts what you say you believe deep in your heart…and even the slightest nuance in what you believe SHOULD impact how you live.
Don’t you wish a passion burned so strongly inside of you that it would motivate you to be willing to risk everything? That’s what your faith is supposed to be like; that’s what it’s supposed to do.
April 16, 2017 Sermon “Rewritten” Reading – Luke 24:1-12 24 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body.[a] […]