Imagine.

You live your life fully for Jesus, responding to the love of God, desiring faithfulness all the days of your life. Scripture is your foundation. You read and pray and build community and walk uprightly in His ways, as you choose to grow in maturity rather than flounder and fall away.

What you have, you give. You fight against sin, against the idols you were groomed to serve, against the idol of self. When you sin you repent, and He forgives. You live thankfully. When wrong is done to you, you forgive. You lend without seeking interest. You do everything for His glory.

You pray for your enemies. The ladder rungs you could be climbing are not in focus, because you aim to make yourself lowly, with the full-on heart of a servant. You love in ways others don’t anticipate. You make sacrifices without consideration of the cost: you already know it’s worthwhile to choose obedience to God.

The burdens of others are your burdens, as also their joys are shared. Your story of God’s lovingkindness and faithfulness can’t help but burst from the seams of your being; your lifestyle is one of true faith. You have rest, and you have work. You pray like your life depends on the Father, because you realize every minute detail does. Your sights are {set} foremost on the cross, on Jesus, the Body of believers, and the souls of the lost…and this world has nothing for you.

This body is a tent. You are a sojourner on this earth, and the world doesn’t recognize you as its own, because the entirety of your identity is found in Jesus Christ. The way you lived and the way you will die is not in vain. You hear “good and faithful servant, job well done.” What you will have left behind is not {primarily} physical or financial.

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Blind eyes were made to see because God chose to work in and through you. The spiritually dead come to eternal life in Christ. The anxious have peace that surpasses circumstance, surpasses the understanding of this world. Joy comes to places that couldn’t have fabricated it. The broken have been made whole. The lost found. The orphan had a parent. The widow had a friend, and provision. The outcast was brought in; the forgotten, remembered.

The church had more than a seat filled, you were living and active, filled with God’s Word. The elderly were attended to, with deep {compassion}, as were the children and the youth. You listened. The homeless had a house, the addict had a help; the hitchhiker had a ride and a meal. The neighbor had a legitimate neighbor, like the left-for-dead man had the Samaritan.

You took up your cross, for the sole sake of following Jesus being worth everything you had, heart, soul, mind, strength, and infinitely more, so you presented yourself to Him and said, “do as you see fit; use me Lord, for You alone are worthy.” You were a Light shining bright.

Those you crossed paths with hit a stark fork in the road, but they came upon it by your gentleness and respect, knowing they were loved: seeds were planted, and each person eventually surrendered their life to Christ or had every opportunity, without excuse, as the Gospel was presented, in word and deed, and they flatly rejected the Way, the Truth, and Life.

This is the life of the follower of Christ. This is the {Christian} way. And a group of people living like this in community together, as a body, is called the church. The church is a force that will change the world, when wakened from slumber.

We have tough questions to ask ourselves. Does this even remotely describe us?

This is what I gather from God’s Word. It’s easier to skirt around most of what is described above. We can make decisions to suit our circumstances, even attempt to justify sin. We can serve ourselves. Every one of us makes these choices; but, let’s not fool ourselves, lie to the world, or abuse God’s Word, by calling our self-service Christianity.

James 2:14-26

Who really sits on the throne of our lives? This question was posed to me in middle school; I’ll never forget it. In my mind I knew the correct answer was supposed to be Jesus. In reality, in my heart, I knew the answer was me.

I had to give to the Lord what was rightfully His–we have to do that every morning, every moment; it’s a bad idea to take the King’s seat.

He must increase. I must decrease.

#LETMEINTRODUCEYOU #isJESUSLORD