⭐The purging/ cleaning / scrubbing / etc. Is ALL BASED ON PURITY OBSESSION
Evangelization ideally must occur spontaneously out of enthusiastic overflow of Love for Jesus! Sharing the faith is not supposed to be a dry mechanical effort!!
⭐IF YOU DON'T TELL OTHERS YOUR HONEST AND JOYFUL TESTIMONY ABOUT THE SALVATION & FORGIVENESS & ETERNAL LIFE YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN BY CHRIST'S GRACE & IN CHRIST'S LOVE, THEY MIGHT OTHERWISE NEVER BE INSPIRED TO EMBRACE THAT TRUTH FOR THEMSELVES!! THIS IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH!!
"God, use me to make Your name known to all peoples, to bring souls into Your harvest.
Give me courage to have honest spiritual conversations with others as I share about You and Your Son and the way you have changed my life."
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‼️‼️If we are truly in Christ, we are truly not our own. Our lives, including our bodies, belong to God. This gives Him the ultimate authority to tell us what to do and what not to do with our bodies... it is those who belong to God—and not to themselves—who are commanded to glorify God with their bodies. In fact, only those in Christ have an opportunity to use their bodies to bring glory to God. In fact, that is now the purpose our bodies are designed to serve. Selfishly participating in [sensual] sin keeps us Christians from fulfilling our purpose.
‼️⭐Christians must take on Christ's attitude about physical suffering. Jesus understood that grief was built into His purpose in this life. Avoiding suffering was not part of the mission. Those willing to suffer for Christ are choosing a path which leads away from sin. Finding pleasure, escape, and comfort is no longer what drives us. Instead, Christians see the point of our lives as doing God's will, even if and when that brings us pain... Having made the choice to live for God's will, to willingly endure what suffering that may bring, we no longer live to bring ourselves pleasure and comfort. Thus we no longer live for sensual experiences... [we must leave behind all] addictions which entangle those who live for comfort and pleasure. Those who live for the will of God, with a willingness to experience physical suffering to accomplish it, set the course of their lives in a different direction.
God intends for the world to see Christ in us. That's part of the purpose He has for us as His holy, set-apart people.
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Those committed to the Lord desire to store up treasure, or rewards in heaven. They desire to serve Him by making right choices out of sincere devotion.
⭐Jesus does not say here that it is wrong to want both service to God and material wealth. What He does say, in crystal-clear terms, is one cannot place ultimate priority on both at the same time. At some moments in life, one must choose which is more important. Christ's calling forces those who would follow Him into such choices. Scripture puts this in the context of servanthood. It doesn't work for a servant to be co-owned by two independent masters—this is why such a thing isn't practiced. The servant can only prioritize one or the other. They might be "loyal," in a sense, to both. But separate masters will command the servant in different, competing directions. As a result, the servant will naturally grow to hate or despise one of the two, while growing to love and be devoted to the other.
THIS IS HAPPENING WITH ME & FOOD!! I AM DESPISING IT MORE AND MORE!!
⭐‼️Those who surrender themselves to following Jesus become servants of God for life. Those who prioritize building wealth for themselves on earth surrender themselves as slaves to materialism. As slaves depend on their masters to provide everything that is needed, those devoted to money or to God also depend on their respective masters to provide for them. The demands of those two masters will always compete.
THIS IS MY PROBLEM STILL. I DONT TRUST GOD ENOUGH OUTSIDE OF MONEY.
⭐‼️This does not mean that someone who serves God whole-heartedly will not have money or possessions. Jesus is not suggesting that Christians must be poor, or destitute, or flee from any kind of luxury... What He means is that a person sincerely serving God will not organize their lives around acquisition of wealth. Money, for a righteous person, is just another tool given by God to be used for His purposes... However, there can only be one "most important" thing in any person's life. The materialistic person who honors God only does so in the margins or for false motives. They live out their days in... moral darkness."
Am I doing this?? What would that, and its opposite, look like for me?
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⭐❤‼️Paul describes this act of being justified by God, of becoming a believer, as something in the past. For those who are Christians, that transaction is complete. Our status before God will never again be in doubt. Paul does not describe a process, or a future event. Eternal salvation is accomplished once, and forever, when a person comes to faith in Christ.
Paul begins by showing that those who have been justified in God's eyes have peace with God. Paul does not mean by this that we feel peaceful, that we experience no anxiety. He means that we are right with God. We are at peace with God from now and through eternity. This is possible only "through our Lord Jesus Christ."
In Christ, God has made a permanent peace with us. And since He is the one who made it, it is peace that can never be lost.
we can rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. On top of the fact that we have been justified and will not suffer God's wrath for our sin, we can participate in the celebration of God Himself. After all, we have received reconciliation with God through Christ's death in our place on the cross and our faith in Him.
Reconciliation describes what happens between two people formerly separated by a dispute, when that dispute is resolved and they are able to come back together. God is the one who had the dispute with us, because of our sin. Christ's death and resurrection satisfied God's demands to make things right between us, and, through our faith alone, the dispute is ended. "We," in this context meaning those who have accepted Christ through saving faith, are reconciled.
Notice that this statement is in the past tense. The transaction is complete. Those who have trusted in Christ have now and forever received reconciliation with God. Period. We have peace with Him (Romans 5:1). We stand now in His grace (Romans 5:2). He has poured His love in our hearts (Romans 5:5). All is decided. Since God is the one who made it happen, nobody can take it away. We are not waiting to see if God will be okay with us after we die. Because we are in Christ, we know that God is okay with us right now, and always will be.
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Paul writes that, as Christians, we have not received the spirit of the world. In other words, we have not been given an attitude that only accepts those things which we can observe for ourselves and work out with human wisdom and reason.
When we came to faith in Christ, that worldly spirit was replaced with the Spirit of God. Through Him, we gain the ability to understand what can only be understood spiritually, apart from our physical senses. God has freely revealed these things to us about His Son and the opportunity to be included in His family. He wants us to know them and trust them as true.
Put negatively, this knowledge from God and the ability to believe it is not available to those who do not have God's Spirit with them. Intellectual knowledge can never force a person to trust in God.
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False teachers mislead Christians, even today, telling us to expect only good days if we make God-pleasing choices. Peter shreds that idea, telling believers to expect just the opposite. In essence, Peter says to not judge God's character or trustworthiness by the quality of our circumstances. Those fiery trials test our faith or, as Peter will write in a few verses, serve as a kind of crucible for the church to purify its faith.
Before we were in Christ, our lives were meaningless (1 Peter 1:18). In Christ, our lives have meaning and great significance, because Christ's life has meaning and great significance. A day is coming when all of Christ's glory will be revealed to the universe. His full worth will become obvious to all. By extension, our lives will be shown to be meaningful and worthwhile on that day as well. And to the extent that we have suffered for Him, we will have that much more joy and gladness on that day (Romans 8:17).
We don't yet fully understand the significance of that moment—how could we? However, we do understand that it is the moment that all of human history has been leading up to. We take by faith that suffering for Christ now will contribute to our joy then. This allows believers to consider suffering for Christ's sake a thing worth rejoicing in—even while we undoubtedly would prefer it to stop.
...we can say, "I am being insulted because I am a Christian. What a blessing to be so closely identified with Christ that the world treats me the same way it treated Him. This is exactly what my life is for!" It's not about taking on a falsely spiritual attitude; it's about correcting our perspective in the moment of suffering to fit our actual beliefs about who we are in Christ.
‼️‼️‼️[But] not all suffering is equally honorable. A Christian who experiences the natural consequence of sinful choices, including being punished by the state for criminal activity, should not make the mistake of thinking he or she is suffering for Christ. No Christian is obligated to suffer as a murderer or thief or meddler. No Christian is required by God to suffer for doing anything immoral or evil. This is for a simple, logical reason: no Christian is ever told by God to do such things. Even if they themselves are being wrongfully persecuted, insulted, or falsely accused, Christians are called to good and moral conduct... hurting ourselves by doing evil is not something we can boast about in Christ. Peter says we should not confuse well-deserved penalties for crimes with genuine suffering for Jesus' sake.
Believers must reject any shame for genuinely suffering for Jesus' sake. Instead, we should boldly give glory to God, in the name of Christ, right in the middle of our suffering for Him.
‼️‼️‼️Those who commit crimes or sins can expect the natural consequences of those actions (1 Peter 4:14–15). A person fired from a job or thrown in jail as a result of theft cannot claim they are being "persecuted," especially not for their Christian faith. People who attach themselves to the word "Christian" (John 15:2), but who disobey the teachings of Jesus, are not being hated for the sake of Christianity; they're suffering for the things they've done contrary to the commands of Christ.
Christ's point here is about someone who acts in a Christlike way and the unbelieving world attacks them because they are imitating Christ. This is the instinctive reaction of all people controlled by their sin nature (1 Peter 4:4).
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nature is something man inherits through a father. According to these religious leaders, their father is Abraham (John 8:33). As Jesus pointed out, however, their actions suggest something very different. Abraham might be their earthly ancestor, but he is not their spiritual father. Those who are "true sons" of Abraham would do what Abraham did—obey God... "true sons" behave as their father did. Since Abraham believed God, and these men do not, they are not part of Abraham's spiritual family. Instead, they are the children of some other father. So far, their conduct has been marked by violence, deception, and hypocrisy... murder, resistance to the truth, and lies... They reject the message of Christ because they do not want to hear it... Jesus states that these hateful enemies are, in fact, the spiritual children of the Devil.
...Jesus knows God and represents truth. These critics are liars who do not know God.
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Jesus used the analogy of a vine and branches to explain the difference between those who merely "appear" to be Christians, versus those who are truly connected to the True Vine (John 15:1). Those "branches" which don't bear fruit are destined to be cut off and destroyed. Their permanent barrenness proves they were never attached to the lifegiving aspects of the vine in the first place. Part of that analogy is Jesus referring to those who "abide in [Him]," and in whom His Word "abides." Both of those facets are necessary to understand the statement given in this verse. Jesus' ministry has always been according to the will of God; what Jesus does, He does in submission to the Father... Jesus exemplified what it means to live according to the will of God. He does not—at all—ask us to endure anything which He Himself did not take on. Jesus obeyed God, as should we. Though we're fallible and prone to make mistakes, to love Christ and to obey Him are one and the same.
Production of spiritual fruit is evidence of a real relationship with Christ, and comes only because of that connection... true "life" requires a natural connection, but abundance requires cultivation. Jesus passes down the love of God the Father to us, and we ought to continue to transmit that love, much as a branch transfers the life given to it from the vine. The means by which we do that is the same as it is for Christ: obedience... abundance is achieved when one deeply "abides" in Christ and His love... we are to actively live in the love He gives to us. That requires us to obey His teachings...
Obedience to Christ's teachings is a sign we are born again, the means by which we transmit His love to the world, and a method by which we glorify God... to follow the will of God, even when the situation seems dire... is also the best thing for us, from an eternal perspective.
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