Plan for: Thanksgiving | Advent | Christmas

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Summary: We worship, adore, fear, and love this righteous God who reveals himself to us as Father God of the heavens, Holy Spirit ministering within us, and Jesus Christ, God coming into human history to set us free from our own sins.

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We’ve talked about topics like theology, sociology, philosophy, government, and other topics, looking at a litany of spheres of life to discover how our Christian faith impacts all of our lives. As the final message of this series, we address this simple fact: Everything is about Jesus. The scriptures say everything was made by Him, for Him, and through Him.

We worship, adore, fear, and love this righteous God who reveals himself to us as Father God of the heavens, Holy Spirit ministering within us, and Jesus Christ, God coming into human history to set us free from our own sins.

To understand the depths of what Jesus has done we must understand the terrible nature of sin. I’ve watched a wife lose her husband to cancer. I’ve seen drug addicts overdose and die. I’ve seen hurricanes devastate entire communities. I’ve seen young people choose suicide. I’ve seen broken families, hopeless people. These are the effects of sin. So we can only understand the weight of what Christ has done when we understand the full horror of sin. But it’s much more personal than that. See each of us have been enemies of God. We were rebels, and one day we decided to set down our weapons, and stop tearing apart the world He gave us.

"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation“ -Colossians 1:21-22

I know Christ has purchased my redemption, yet I feel the sorrow of the fact that I fall short of God’s righteous standard. I love God’s standard. I love His holy nature. I love his laws and his commands. I love the savior Jesus Christ. And for those reasons, I lament my nature, and how I live my life, even today. Especially today. Having been given the Holy Spirit to be with me, I feel it now, everyday.

If you constantly feel like you fall short, that your sins drive you nuts, because you love God and you want to obey His way, that is a very good sign. That is a sign that your saved. Romans chapter 8 says We all groan internally, along with nature, creation itself, because of the sin problem. We feel the sorrow of it, we groan and eagerly await the perfection of all things.

If your constantly worried that you might lose your salvation, that you fall short of God, that your weak and trapped in the flesh, then stop worrying, God isn’t going to lose you. He is going to uphold you along the journey. Nothing can separate us from Christ. Our part is to remain in faith. Keep nurturing your faith, keep attending church, and you’re gonna do great. This is a lifestyle. And if sin upsets you, that means your growing closer to God.

Because as the famed preacher Charles Spurgeon said, “The nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely has he to mourn over his own evil heart.”

Yet it is right that we should tremble before a holy God. The only reason every single one of us don’t go into outer darkness is because Jesus Christ did something very special for us. Because we are all justly exposed to the wrath of God. The justice of God was justly raised up against us because of our many, many grevious sins. And I love the justice of God, within I want His justice to reign.

We’ve each fallen short of God’s standard. And to me, when I’m feeling the depths of my own sinfulness, I know I deserve hell. I know it. In fact it would be just for God to send me there, apart from Christ.

Jesus said that the faithful and the unfaithful will be separated, the faithful will go to eternal life and the unfaithful will go to eternal punishment. So we should always seek to be found as one of the faithful.

Don’t give up. Don’t stop walking the walk. It is common for us to feel discouraged along the way, I’m encouraging you to not grow weary, but to continue. God will not forget your hard work. It’s all building up, as treasure in heaven.

So we are called to speak for Christ. To be called to carry His gospel, the good news of his life, death, and resurrection is an overwhelming concept. To live missionally seems overwhelming. It seems like too much at times. Why? Because of my own weakness. Because when things start going well for a while, I tend to begin to push Jesus aside. I tend to want to do things my own way. As much as I try to forsake myself and live for Christ, my own selfishness always seems to be pushing in.

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