"LIVING IN HONOR OF OUR SAVIOR"

Matt. 6:30 And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you? You have so little faith!
Matt. 6:31 “So don’t worry about having enough food or drink or clothing.
Matt. 6:32 Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs,
Matt. 6:33 and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.

One of the things that is clear about God and is seen throughout the scriptures is His desire to help man. There can be no doubt that God desires to help us and has given us a covenant promise to take care of us as His children. As you develop relationship with your heavenly Father this fact becomes more apparent. Having said that the one thing that has often hurt our ability to develop this intimacy with the Father is when we become “benefit” minded as a believer.

For quite some time now we have seen preaching from the pulpit that is primarily focused on what God can do for you. I am again not in any way discounting the fact that God does desire to help us experience the benefits of what He has provided for us through Jesus Christ. But when the focus for serving God becomes the benefits and not the relationship, it isn’t long before you see people who say they love God and that they are Christians who won’t give their all to follow Him unless it benefits them. The other problem with this mindset is that when times get tough and tribulations come, people quit on God.

Jesus clearly here in Matthew chapter 6 defines for us what our focus in coming to God should be. One who is born again should not live like a pagan (one who does not know God), who’s focus is on what they can get out of life, or what’s in it for me. Once we are born again our focus should change to one of gratitude for what Christ has done for us and one of service as to how we can now show our gratitude in living for Him, not for ourselves. The thing that most don’t realize is that Jesus here in Matthew has said that when you begin to live this way your Father knowing what you have need of will take care of you.

I recently heard a powerful message from Dr. Richard Hanner who shared something that the church needs to wake up to. We basically have two types of churches that relate back to the two types of people whom God led out of Egypt and tried to take them into their promised land. God told them that if they would be obedient to do all that He had commanded them they would go in and posses what He had given them promise of. The problem was you had what Richard calls a “wilderness” mentality church and a “Canaan land” mentality church.

The wilderness church was always looking to God for what they could get from Him. They also were never satisfied and always wanted more. They were not obedient to follow after God’s commands and they wanted to serve God their way. The Canaan church believed what God had said, and they instead wanted to obey Him and do whatever He asked of them. The Bible says they had a “different spirit” about them. The difference was one group wanted God to serve them, and it was all about “what’s in it for me?” The others who had a different spirit were willing to serve God and follow after Him because of who He is and what He had done to bring them out of bondage from Egypt.

2 Cor. 5:14 For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died;
2 Cor. 5:15 and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

In preparing to write my Weekly Wisdom on this Memorial Day I couldn’t help but think of this analogy in relationship to the men and women who gave their lives for our freedom, and still do. They did not do this with the attitude, “what’s in it for me”; instead they gave their lives to serve a country that they were grateful to be a part of. I know several people who have served in our military and of those I know none of them went into the service with a focus on themselves. The one’s I know did so because of their love for our country and their desire to serve.

This is how we as believers should live our lives everyday. As the apostle Paul so powerfully states above that what motivated him in what he did was the love of Christ that he had been shown through God saving him from his sin. As the Bible teaches there is no greater love than one giving their life for a friend. Here Paul states that Jesus died for all, and because of this we who have received new life through Christ should no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again. Doing so means we don’t come to Christianity with the focus on self and what I can get out of it. Instead it is a focus of selfless sacrifice to serve and honor our God and the price His Son paid to free us from our sin.

The greatest thing that any born again believer can do to honor God and honor the death of His Son Jesus Christ is to live their lives no longer with the focus on self, but on how we can serve Him. This is, as Matthew 6:33 states above, living for Him and making the Kingdom of God our primary focus in life. The devil knows all to well that if he can get believers focused on themselves then they won’t really be a threat to him and they will become weak. Doing so will result in believers never staying committed to the things of God. As soon as they find something that they don’t like about the church they attend, or something the Bible says they should do that they don’t want to do, they turn and go their own way.

2 Cor. 11:23 Are they ministers of Christ?—I speak as a fool—I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often.
2 Cor. 11:24 From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one.
2 Cor. 11:25 Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep;
2 Cor. 11:26 in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;
2 Cor. 11:27 in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness—
2 Cor. 11:28 besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches.

I think often of the apostles and what they went through in the New Testament. When you read things like this that Paul went through I often think of the things our military goes through as well. At times when I have thought things are tough, that is when I reflect on what the disciples have gone through and what Christ has done for me. The reason that I believe addressing this issue is so important is because when we are living a life of the “self help” gospel and not living for Christ we become very weak. That is what satan wants.

Paul was not a weak preacher, and one of the reasons this is true is because he was not serving Christ for what he could get from God, but instead out of a gratitude for what Christ had done for him. In all that Paul went through you could not stop this man from fulfilling his purpose here on earth. In all that he went through notice in verse 28 what he was concerned about, the churches, not getting what he wanted. His love for Christ was so great he was willing to do whatever it took to preach the gospel. I often wonder how many Christians today would give up on serving God faithfully if they went through similar things as these.

Mark 10:45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

As Jesus stated here in Mark that He did not come to be served, but to serve and give His life as a ransom for us. I certainly don’t want to imply that I have perfected this, but this is my goal that I am working on every day of my life. I am aware that if I serve God to get what is in it for me this will only make me weak and I won’t really be serving God. I am not implying that serving God means we must have all kinds of bad things happen in our lives, but scriptures tells us that if we live godly we will suffer persecution.

The church of Jesus Christ has been called by God to be the most powerful force on the planet as we are His body. The more we can turn the church around to serve God just because we are grateful and because we truly love Him, the more unstoppable we become. If ministers only preach to people the benefits of God and don’t include the reason why we should serve Him we will remain weak. But if we will teach God’s people that we should serve Him in honor of His death and resurrection being grateful that He took our sin, our punishment, and death itself for us, we can become a force in this earth that will not quit God and will therefore not be stopped.

Mark 8:35 If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will find true life.

True life is not found in living for yourself, but for the One who gave His life so that you could have a new life. That new life is not to be lived like those who don’t know God, who always want to know what is in it for them, but instead are willing to serve and do whatever they can to advance the Good News of God’s Kingdom. Those who do, as promised by Jesus, will see God take care of them and they will experience the God-kind of life.

As I grow older I become more aware and more thankful for those in our country who have given their lives so that I can live free. I also become more aware of the price that Jesus and so many of His disciples who have gone before us have paid so that we could come to know Him and have eternal life. If we like the Canaan church can get this “different spirit” about us we can conquer any challenge that comes for we will know who we are, and we will know Who we belong too. We will be unstoppable!

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