Gtcotr/ss100321
John 15:16 “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.”
This morning I came with a message from the Word of God for you today. The message is simple and encouraging. God is not limited by those things which are going on in the world around you. And God does not intend for you to live in fear or regret. (Isaiah 43:1; 1 John 4:8; Philippians 3:13-14)
God is not worried, and your worry won’t help Him one bit. (Phi 4:6)
God does not want you to bury your head in the sand and ignore what is happening in the earth. Rather, what God wants is for you to lift your head up above the clouds and have faith in what is happening in the heavens. (Luke 21:28)
There has never been a time since the dawn of creation when God has abandoned the earth or His children who are living here, (Hebrews 13:5-6). Every one of us have been assigned angels to guard and protect us from the evil which is on the earth. And we have also been given superpower seeds to grow for ourselves. (Hebrews 1:13-14)
Don’t get mixed up or confused and let the devil deceive you. The Bible says that fear of death will keep you in bondage all of your life (Hebrews 2:15). Death for a Born-Again Believer is not evil and is not to be avoided at all costs. For a Believer to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The worst thing the devil could do to a Believer in Jesus, if the Lord allowed him to, is to promote them to heaven and their eternal reward. But that’s all in God’s hands. We who are still here on earth, are here for a reason. God has a plan and evidently you have some, albeit small, some part to play in God’s plan to offer salvation to the whole world.
Who knows what it is that you are destined to do for God? Well, God does … and believe me when I tell you that one of the hardest things you will ever do is to learn to be happy and stay godly on this earth until you find and finish doing your part for Jesus. Thankfully, we have been given access to some superpowers that makes us invincible. We are equipped to be victorious every time we are attacked by enemies of God around us.
The message I have from God for us today is found in the New Testament book of Galatians, chapter 5. While you turn in your Bibles to our text, allow me to speak directly to some who may be unhappy, worried, or perhaps even afraid today.
First:
You were born in the image of God. If you want to know what God looks like, He looks like you on the outside. But because of sin, you feel a lot different than He does on the inside. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Sin was personally invited to come into our first parents by Adam, and Eve themselves. Sin entering into their body and soul introduced a deadly spiritual virus that attacked their spiritual DNA and destroyed the immortal “God” gene they carried. Man became mortal and carnal and therefore eternal life could not be passed on through mortal man. (Genesis 3:6ff)
Since that time, every genetic offspring of Adam and Eve have been born looking like God on the outside but absent of the life of God on the inside. (Romans 5:12)
Without this eternal and immortal God gene, mortal bodies decay and the hearts and minds of men and women fall prey to the wickedness and the deterioration of sin. If left to run its course, sin will reproduce wickedness and evil and it will ultimately cause eternal death and damnation of the body and the soul. (James 1:15)
God decided that He would save the soul by grace through faith, (Ephesians 2:8-9), and then give the saved soul a new incorruptible and immortal glorified body at the resurrection. However, if a person refuses the blood of Jesus, that person’s mortal body will eventually die, and their disembodied soul will be left to suffer the anguish and pain of sin without God’s help forever. (Revelation 20:14-15; 21:8)
Second:
God wants to save people from the perilous eternity they will face without Him. This is the reason He made a way for every person to be Born-Again by receiving a spiritual blood infusion of sorts. The blood of Jesus Christ is pure and carries the immortal spiritual DNA which has the power to destroy sin and its eternal effects.
This spiritual infusion of the blood of Jesus not only destroys the power of sin for eternity but also, The blood of Jesus contains the power to change the way you think and how you feel on the inside.
Today you look like God on the outside. The problem is not the outside but the inside. Jesus made that plain over and over, (Matthew 23:5 & 27; Mark 7:23; Luke 16:15).
God has freely offered the blood of Christ to anyone who believes in Jesus and humbly calls on His name to save them. (Romans 10:13)
You can do this at any time and there is no time like the present. (2Co 6:2)
Why would you want to wait another minute? Your eternity and the eternity of those who you influence hang in the balance. Without the blood of Jesus, it only gets worse from here. (2 Timothy 3:13)
Remember, you look like God on the outside but once you are born-again by the blood of Jesus, you can also begin to look like Him on the inside. Once you receive the Spirit of the Lord into your heart and mind, you will begin to grow the fruit of the Spirit in your life. Let me show you …
Have you found Galatians 5 yet? We will begin reading with verse 22.
Galatians 5 NKJV
22 But the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
When a person who believes in Jesus calls on His name and asks Jesus to save them, He does. The blood of Jesus is immediately applied to that person’s life and sin is covered, neutralized, and destroyed, and the soul is saved. That person dies to sin and their soul is born-again. (Romans 6:11)
The born-again soul is eternally saved and safe once covered by the blood of Jesus. It is at that moment God turns His full attention to the heart and mind of this newly born-again babe in Christ. God hopes to teach and train every one of His children to think, feel, and act holy, right, and righteous. God has given us His Holy Spirit to live within us to teach us His ways and to help us be transformed into the image of God on the inside. (1Peter 2:2)
We
can chart our progress and thereby our usefulness to Christ by keeping a watch
on how fruitful we have become since we have been born-again. We are encouraged
to not judge others, but we are also encouraged to inspect our own fruit to see
if we are growing in the Lord. Fruit such as:
·
Love
– Joy – Peace
·
Longsuffering
– Kindness – Goodness
· Faithfulness – Gentleness – Self-Control
You have been given everything you need to grow these seeds into superpowers which will give you victory after victory against your enemies. You are superhuman and you have the power to defeat satan and shine a light on the goodness and the glory of God. Remember: You did not choose Jesus, He chose you. And He chose you to grow lasting fruit.
If
you have not received the blood of Christ which takes away the sin of the world
then consider these truths:
1.
God is not going to force you … that’s just not God’s way.
2.
Your mortal body will not be saved in this world.
3. You have been given superpower seeds … what you do with them is up to you.
How can you grow a fruitful garden for God? The Bible says that you are the garden of God. God has planted the Tree of Life in you. You are the New Testament Eden. Genesis 2:15 tells us God placed man in the garden to cultivate and guard it. He chose you to grow lasting fruit for Him …
Cultivate
and guard the precious seed (Word) of God in your heart and mind. Tend to it
and it will grow an abundant crop of spiritual fruit.
