Gtcotr/ws062222
Colossians 1:27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
You are God’s hope for the world you live in today. Each person is born for just the right time, prepared for just the right job, and positioned in just the right place to accomplish the desired destiny God has chosen.
The things which have happened in your past as well as those things you are presently encountering are not punishment for the past but are rather positioning for the future.
God has a plan, He will succeed, and you have a chance to participate.
Don’t let the world tell you anything different.
God knows you are not perfect, but He also knows He has perfected you in
Christ.
·
1 Corinthians 2:16 You have the mind of Christ
and …
·
Philippians 4:13 You can do all things through
Christ …
·
Philippians 4:19 God shall supply all your
needs …
·
Isaiah 54:17 No weapon formed against you
shall prosper …
· 1 John 4:4 You have overcome because greater is He who is in you…
I suppose everyone has reason to doubt if they can truly be used of God. Especially after some failure or perhaps after some disappointment, hardship, or loss. At times people even imagine they have somehow disqualified themselves because of doubt or some lapse of faith or faithfulness. Nothing could be farther from the truth … just ask the Apostle Peter.
You may not be perfect but you have been perfected.
Several from our Church were in Greece this past week following the footsteps of the Apostle Paul. While there, I had occasion to read from the 7th and the 8th chapter of the book of Romans. I can identify with the message Paul wrote and how he felt some days.
(synopsis of Romans 7:14-25)
Romans 7 NKJV
14 ¶ For we know that the law is spiritual, but I
am carnal, sold under sin.
15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For
what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.
16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree
with the law that it is good.
17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin
that dwells in me.
18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh)
nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is
good I do not find.
19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do;
but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no
longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
21 I find then a law, that evil is present with
me, the one who wills to do good.
22 For I delight in the law of God according to
the inward man.
23 But I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin
which is in my members.
24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me
from this body of death?
25 I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
But thanks be to God, Paul did not leave us without the remedy … we are not living in some Greek tragedy. The Holy Spirit had Paul share his feelings and bring these things to a victorious conclusion. Let’s read the remedy and the victory God gives us through our relationship with Jesus.
Romans 8 NKJV
1 ¶ There is therefore
now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according
to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
2 For the law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
3 For what the law could not
do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the
flesh,
4 that the righteous
requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to
the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live
according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who
live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
6 For to be carnally minded is
death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
7 Because the carnal mind is
enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
8 So then, those who are in
the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the
flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if
anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.
10 ¶ And if Christ is
in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life
because of righteousness.
11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
God has a plan for my life and even when I am feeling defeated, I am victorious in Christ Jesus, because I am in Christ and Christ is in me.
Don’t allow the devil to shut you up or shut you down.
Romans 8 NKJV
31 ¶ What then shall we say
to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
35 Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written: “For Your sake we are
killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
37 Yet in all these things we
are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
38 For I am persuaded that
neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things
present nor things to come,
39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Now
get out there and shine for Jesus! You’re the best God has …
