I love doing this. I get to tell you week after week in as many ways as I can how you can live your life to the full. I have the best message in the world to offer that everyone needs to hear, one that will give them hope for today and for the future. The message? Life transformation is available to anyone who chooses to be a disciple of Jesus.
Daily discipleship is a lifestyle of choice. You must choose to keep Jesus at the centre of everything you do in order to experience the depth and breadth of spiritual maturity and impact on others that gives you a compelling purpose for how you live out each day.
The first three messages of this series are about Life Transformation – The Reality of Daily Discipleship. We have focused on key things you need to do to establish and grow in as Jesus’ follower. You must choose Jesus as the master of your life after counting the cost of doing so. You have to make sure your heart is soft and open to receiving the seed of God’s word in your heart every day to nourish you. You need to train your mind through prayer, the word and the Holy Spirit to be and to stay renewed. These are ongoing disciplines that will contribute to your ongoing spiritual health and growth.
This Sunday I will focus on the importance of investing in your relationships with others. How you connect to and relate with others is to be loved-based. When I say love I am talking about the costly kind; love that sacrifices for the sake of others. It’s that kind of love that maximizes marriages, enables families to flourish and impacts neighbourhoods and communities to become more caring and generous.
Jesus has already showed us that this is possible. When you study the Gospels you see that he invested himself in others so that they could learn to live like him. Jesus’ disciples, those who chose to follow him and obey his teachings, didn’t just keep the reality of abundant life to themselves. Like Jesus they learned, grew and served together in order to carry on the work of God’s kingdom long after Jesus left them to go back to heaven. They took the gospel everywhere they went and offered themselves as exhibits of Jesus’ transforming love. That work continues to this very day. You and I are the ones Jesus has commissioned to show the world the power of God’s love in action.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34,35
Read those words over and over. Think about how important your relationships are to advancing the cause of Christ. Your marriage, your family, your friendships, your relatives, your church family – every relationship you have has the potential to point people towards life transformation in Christ. Every relationship requires you to show the kind of love that Jesus has already shown towards you. What are the implications for how you invest in others? How will you be changed by doing this? What impact will loving sacrificially have on others?
Lots of great things to consider. I look forward to digging deeper into this with you.
See you Sunday.
Pastor Del