Live What You Believe!

Sermon for September 15, 2024: “Live What You Believe!”

Do you struggle to live what you believe? If you are human, you do. What we believe in is...must be distinct, higher and greater than how we live in the day to day.

If I ask you what you believe, and you say: “I believe I’ll have another drink!, or a smoke!”, or if you say I believe that it is sunny/cloudy outside,

I believe that I am breathing and that we are having a conversation, that’s really not saying much is it, beyond the obvious.

And there’s no challenge to doing what we are doing right now. We don’t need to believe in, we don’t struggle to believe what we are doing right now.

Some of us might have struggled with the idea of going to church today, or whether or not we would tune in online or watch the service later, but the fact that you’ve done that, crossed that bridge as it were, hopefully means that you’re not struggling about that decision right now.

We struggle when we’re not fully living up to what we believe in, when we’re not living up to our own expectations, however formed (by culture, family, God’s Word). That’s why we can struggle to live what we believe.

What we believe is very important. Doing what we believe is just as important.

If I say that I believe I am an amazing french horn player (which I can not play), but I never practice let alone touch a french horn, you can say that my belief is all in my head and not at all rooted in my reality.

If I insist that I am something that I’m not, you can say that I’m disconnected from what is true, there is a disconnect between objective reality and my subjective belief.

So what is the goal? The goal is to increasingly live by what I say I believe, to gradually but consistently, incrementally but relentlessly, pursue the object of my belief, the One to Whom I look for all the answers to the most meaningful questions in life.

Now, there are very good reasons that people come to faith in Christ, and there are good reasons why people continue to follow Jesus their whole lives.

Who would like to stand and briefly share, in just a sentence, why you follow Jesus?

So we follow Jesus on purpose, for good reasons. And the longer we follow Him, the more we have to testify about His goodness and faithfulness.

Let’s plunge in: If I was to ask you about your identity, what would I really be getting at?

I’d want to know how you see yourself. I’d want to know about your values, what makes you tick. Identity is huge.

It is so incredibly important for us to understand who we are, if we’re adults. For youth, it can be a real struggle to figure out who they are apart from their parents.

Something goes wrong if we don’t do the hard work of figuring out who we are.

Learning what matters to us, learning to accept who we are, learning our strengths and weaknesses and blind spots is critical to becoming a strong, emotionally healthy, humble and grateful person.

So identity...yours and mine is critical. All-round, it’s something worthwhile giving our attention to. It’s also worth giving our attention to, or occasionally rediscovering with fresh eyes, who God is.

Jesus gives us unique and wonderful insights into the identity of God. Jesus showed us that God is Abba, or Father.

Jesus showed us that God truly cares about all that He has created. Jesus showed us that God is concerned about justice and fairness.

Jesus showed us that God is not at all removed from His creation, but that He is intimately concerned about all living things, especially human beings. That means you. God cares for you, He is concerned about your well-being.

So much so that Scripture says in 1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your cares upon him; for he cares for you”. Modern English Version

The Amplified Version captures the depth of meaning of the Greek: “Casting all your cares [all your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares about you [with deepest affection, and watches over you very carefully]. AMP

So, in case your wondering, or if you ever doubt it, you can rest in the fact that God truly does care for you, and He cares about your life, your struggles. He is with you always.

Jesus and His Word reveal these things to us.

But Who is Jesus? Who is the Christ? Why does He matter? Why does history seem to revolve around Him? Why does history divide at His birth between BC and AD?