The Responsability Of Salvation

The Responsibility of Salvation

Eph 4:7 - 8, 2Cor 5:18, 1 Cor 12:5, Eph 2:10 2 Tim 1:8 - 9, Gal 1:15, Eph 4:1, 1 Pet 2:9 -10

1 Pet 4:10, Mat 28:18 - 20, Phil 2:5-7, Mat 16:25, 1 Cor 12:27, Rom 12:1 - 12

November 4, 2002

I. I have talked in the last two weeks about worship, and prayer.

A. We are to worship God to show our love for him and to draw near to him.

B. When we worship we are raised to a higher place above our circumstances, where we can look at our problems from the perspective that God does.

C. Through prayer we are able to communicate with God on a daily basis to stay connected to our power source, and be reminded that we are children of God, who have the benefits of being children of God.

D. But with those benefits come responsibilities.

E. When we become Christians the bible says that we are given spiritual gifts

(Eph 4:7 - 8 NIV) But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men."

F. Spiritual gifts come with the grace that we receive that makes us right with God, these gifts are given by the grace of God through Jesus.

G. If we are Christians then we have spiritual gifts, and these gifts that we have been given are to be used by us to build up, or strengthen and expand the body.

H. We are to be involved in helping people come to know Jesus as their savior and then help them mature in their relationship with God to the point that they can then help others know God and grow in their relationship with Him.

II. This all basically means that as Christians we are to be involved in ministry, because as a part of our salvation God has gifted us so that we can be involved in his plan for reaching the world in the name of Jesus.

A. One problem that we have with this at times is that we decide that we can’t do the things that God has told us that we are to do. Sometime we get caught up in measuring our ability by the standards that the world around us measures it.

B. We have to be careful not to measure our ability, by what we do or by what we see ourselves as able to do.

1. World values often fail to recognize true success. In 1902, the poetry editor of Atlantic Monthly returned a stack of poems with this note, "Our magazine has no room for your vigorous verse." The poet was Robert Frost.

2. In 1905, the University of Bern turned down a doctoral dissertation as "irrelevant and fanciful." The writer of that paper was Albert Einstein.

3. In 1894 an English teacher noted on a teenager’s report card, "A conspicuous lack of success." The student was Winston Churchill.

4. Another student once graduated 42nd out of a class of 58 at military school. This student with so little potential was named Napoleon Bonaparte.

5. The world often fails to see the potential for success that lies within a man or a woman.

6. But God created us and he knows our true potential and it is Him that we are to please, we have been gifted and commissioned to carry out His work here on Earth.

C. People have different kinds of emotional needs and the Bible says it takes different kinds of ministries to see to these needs. And it takes different kinds of people to carry out these different ministries.

D. That is a lot of what we have been talking about in the new members class that we have been having. None of us is built in such a way that we are able to carry out all the ministries of the church, because God does not intend for any one person to carry out all the ministries of the church.

E. Each one of us has been given different gifts because all of us have ministry that we are to carry out to see that the needs of others are met.

F. (2 Cor 5:18 NIV) All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:

G. Reconciliation is when you take two opposing parties and you bring them together. The Bible says it s our job as Christians, our ministry, to reconcile people with God. We re to bring people who have been separated from God to God, and bring about reconciliation.

H. One ministry that we are all to be a part of is telling people about the salvation that God has made available through Jesus. We Christians ( those who have been reconciled to God) have been given the responsibility of seeing that others are reconciled with God. We are to share with other people the salvation that God has given us. That is first and foremost!