Spiritual Battle

We often hear the Gospel and take it for granted. His truth has to be applied to every area of our lives. The Gospel says that you are not your own, you are freed. So walk in confidence. What are the areas in your life that you haven't died to yet? If we are saved, now what??

By Grace, through Faith, we are saved. We are saved for God's glory and Kingdom. Without a personal relationship with Jesus, you don't know Jesus. The enemy is trying to tell us that we're someone we're not, whispering lies to us. Satan is swinging hard and he's coming at our lives. It's a spiritual war and often times we don't even know that we're at battle. We've turned Christianity into consumerism and we wonder why we're getting our butts kicked in this war. We stop fighting and we shift into neutral. To put it simple: you're either stopping, or you're growing.

Ephesians 6:14-18 says "Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shelf of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints..."

The Gospel should lead to a fight and an urgency to go out and share it with others, live it with others. We are ambassadors for the community around us. Know who your enemy is and keep fighting. See the fight for what it is: a battle for spiritual space and spiritual territory. Go and push back darkness. In the Christian bubble, we create a list of what a Christian is supposed to look like. We lead with judgement. We forget we are broken. The only thing you bring to the table is your sin, which makes salvation necessary. He wipes this sin from us. Lead with who you need to know to be saved. Instead, we lead with a list of things you should be and do and not do. We should be a culture that loves people where they are. Don't hold the lost community that we do for Christians. Introduce them to our Savior. Look into this Gospel and be overwhelmed by His love. God wants more of you. He is better than our way. Our way brings death, but His way brings life. James 1:22 says "But be doers of the world, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."

Surrender to His calling,
Courtney

Discipleship

What should it cost me to follow Jesus? Jesus isn't calling us to something that He Himself isn't already laying down. Our Savior is so good, because He gets us and He understands us. He isn't someone who is saying "get on my level." He humbles Himself and asks us to follow Him. He's not yelling at us from the sidelines, He's like Shaun T from Insanity doing it right along side us.

Jesus knows what temptation is like. Matthew 4:1 tells us "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil..." He empathizes and sympathizes with us because He knows us and has been where we have been. Loose your identity and put your identity in Him. That's what discipleship is.

We must follow the purpose and plan of God. It's either all Jesus or no Jesus. So, what things compete for your affections? Jesus requires us to be all in, because He is all in for us. We can't have competing affections. That's not trusting God or denying yourself. What is it that you continue to run back to that isn't Christ? Those things don't bring ultimate joy and satisfaction. They will leave you empty. If you're looking for your identity in those things, you will loose your identity. Deny yourself, take up your Cross daily. Every day, choose this identity.

Jesus is intentional in telling us what to do. We are calling ourselves to submissiveness to who Jesus is when we take up our Cross. How often do we justify the things that we do? I find myself doing this all the time. We are fully submitted to Him when we deny ourselves, when it's no longer about us. A relationship with Him is highly relational. Even if it were to cost us our whole lives, we must believe that Jesus really is the son of God. If your self worth is found in anything but Jesus, then it's sin. He is a sufficient identity to place ourselves into. Join in a relationship with Him, He died for you.

We proclaim God in our lives, speech, and actions. Die to yourself. In that you gain life. Luke 9:24 is my favorite verse, it says "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it." As we follow Him, we get to walk with the God of the Universe that desires you. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing we are saved by and will be saved by. There is no point in our lives when we don't need to hear that He died for us.

Follow Him. Do it all out because He did it all out for us,
Courtney