Mediocrity need not apply. For while those who have decided to commit their lives to following Jesus were once lost, they are now inexplicably found! And it could not be a more magnificent existence to know this truth in the deepest parts of our soul.
So comes that same question our series has been asking these last few weeks: Now what? How do we continue to follow Jesus as our apostle brethren began to show us 2,000 years ago?
When we have accepted Jesus as our Lord, we have been given the gift of the promised Holy Spirit, or as Pastor Mike pointed out in his sermon, God’s actual presence now with us and available to share in. The only caveat is this: it needs to matter in our lives. We need to do something with it. If we want to truly experience God in the way He promised, we must go with Him in faith.
To get to witness our students passionately worshiping Jesus, taking steps and making commitments to trust and follow Christ, was amazing! One of the most encouraging things that comes from these type of events is the unity and community that is formed.
The Christian life is not a consistent mountaintop experience. It can be repetitive and, at times, might even be described as blasé. I doubt even those the closest to God live without desert experiences. But there is so much promised to us in a relationship with God!
The winner in this story is guaranteed. And as Pastor Josh fleshed out in his message on Sunday, the brokenness that started in the Garden of Eden was immediately foretold to be restored to wholeness … humanity just had to wait awhile before the serpent-crusher was fully revealed a few thousand years later.
Why with only two choices to pick from did Adam and Eve not just keep eating from the Tree of Life and the other good trees in the garden? And why, instead, were they drawn to the one tree they were told not to eat?
We were the pinnacle of His creation, and after we chose to rebel against His ways and have what pastor, writer, and speaker Mark Sayers refers to as “the Kingdom without the King,” He has been active in restoring us into relationship with Himself ever since. But how does God go about this restoration?
We must build our foundations on the rock because just as we experience plenty of rain in the Northwest, we will all experience plenty of life’s rain and storms; and when the ultimate storm comes that will decide our eternal fate, on what foundation did we build our house?
By abiding in Jesus and endeavoring to be more like Him through time spent with God and His Word, we begin to see that good fruit He promises in our lives as He prunes us into who He made us to be. We begin to understand more plainly why Jesus had to come and die for our sins, and what it looks like to follow Him.
It does not take much for one go down the wide road. The truth is, it is far easier… at first. Inevitably, however, that “wide gate” and the road that follows eventually ends in emptiness, isolation, desolation...
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