Born again

Life After Finding Christ

Last week we learned God meets us where we are at. We don’t need to clean our lives up in order for the Lord to come into our lives He does the cleaning.

So after you’ve accepted the Lord what does life look like?

We will look at this over the next few weeks.

What influences you to do the things you do?

The way you act or dress whether you think you are being influenced or not I assure you that you are.

Did you ever play dress up when you were younger?

Why did you dress up as these people?- Because you looked up to them or wanted to be like them.

The same is true for Jesus as accept the Lord we need to put on our new selfs. In Colossians we learn of the things we need to take off or get rid of and the new things we need to put on.

Colossians 3:1–10 NIV

1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

He Paul is telling us how we should be living as New Christians.

Verses 1 and 2

What does it mean to set your heart on things above?

What does it mean to set your minds on things above?

To anwser these questions think about the characteristics of Jesus.

Do you think your heart and mind can be set on 2 different things?

Yes it can.

We see the Lord meet us where we are in life and if you are wondering the things that Jesus is going to address in your life verses 5-8 Paul gives us a list of some of these things.

Vs. 5 Put to death

We should consider ourselves dead and unresponsive to sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. The Bible does not condemn sex, but it forbids improper expressions of sexual desire.

Vs 6-The anger of God” refers to God’s final judgment on these kinds of ruinous behaviors. When you are tempted to do these things, remember that you must one day answer to God for your actions.

We see in verses 7-10 that we are putting on our new clothes becoming the version of our self that Christ wants us to be.

does this mean we will never get angry again or cuss no but we try to do it less.

How do we do this? We try our best to treat others like Jesus did or the old saying WWJD? This actually as simple as it is really helps we don’t know what someone else is going through at home or in life.

Did you deserve for them to be mean to you? No most likely not but thing about when you’ve had a bad day and took it out on someone else.

When we give our lives to Jesus Christ and put on our new nature, we begin the process of being renewed. We desire to follow the example of Jesus, growing to love him and others more and more. But this doesn’t happen immediately. At first it is especially hard to resist the temptation to fall back into the sinful habits we had adopted before conversion. Therefore, we must be very intentional about ridding ourselves of all evil practices and immorality. We cannot be fully committed to what Christ teaches when we are regularly falling back into our sinful ways

This change of our new self from our old is not something that happens overnight. So don’t be discouraged if you start out strong and then fall back the important thing is to get back on tract. If you have a million dollars and lose 10 you don’t throw away the other 999,990 dollars trying to get the 10 back.

This is how you should think when it comes to sin. You shouldn’t just keep sinning you repent and do better don’t tell yourself well I’ve already sinned once today might as well. Keep going and start over tomorrow .

James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”