How can i live this life?
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How do i live this life?
How do i live this life?
Morning so we continue in the series I have a question, Tammy was going to do today but is at home not feeling very well. so today we will look at the question how do i live this life
A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
The quicker we grab hold of this truth for our selves the sooner we will be free of the things that are holding us back from all the great things that God has for us.
So who wants a great life, my hands up I want it.
I want all that God has for me.
You see we have to make the decision that our past isn’t going to hold us back, yes our past will have a part to play in who we are because our past helps to shape us but it doesn’t have to be our future.
We all have a past, some of us more of one than others, or should I say maybe a more colourful one.
And our past has a say in who we are and how we react to certain situations and people but because of past hurts we react in the wrong way, Causing hurt to others.
But I want to say that the past doesn’t have to have that much power in your life, it doesn’t have to be such a big thing.
Jesus says you are a new creation:
it says In the Bible in 2 Corinthians 5:15 - 21 we are new creations. Yet we hold onto our past like a child holds to a blanket determined not to let it go. But Jesus paid the ultimate price on the cross for us so that we may be free. By holding on we can never reach our full potential, never fulfill the destiny that God has for us.
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
Seek Him first, let Jesus be the one who you first go to at the beginning of your day, praise Him first when you awake, read his word first not facebook, meditate on Him, spend time with Him, live a life of worship, don’t let sundays be the time when you come to sing & call that your act of worship, let out of your seeking of Him, your whole life becomes your act of worship, singing although awesome to gather & sing praise & God loves it without a life of worship it is meaningless & when we seek God first, put Him first it changes us.
1) So what is this life about?
Is it about us? Is it about how we feel? Should we be selfish and just live out our lives to please ourselves no matter who gets hurt in the process, I suppose life would be easier that way with no one to care about other than ourselves. But would that bring us happiness and what does the Bible say about this, how we should live our lives.
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Surely this is hard work and doesn’t always lead to an easy life but who said life was to be easy. Life doesn’t have to be easy to be great.
Jesus said “I have come so that you might have life and life to the full”
But you have to do something with it, it won’t just come to you, life is a gift and to get the most out of a gift you have to unwrap it.
It’s no good receiving a gift and never taking the wrapper off it, how will you ever use it. Apart from maybe as a paper weight or a door stop. It will never reach its full potential. It will never be used for what it was intended to be used for. It will never be enjoyed.
You don’t get a wii put it to the side and use the packaging to plaster a wall.
If you want to live life you have to do something about it, you have to get out there and engage with it. Do something about it, life is a gift.
A new perspective
Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
The Israelites had gained freedom from Egypt where they had been in slavery under extreme oppression and God had seen there plight and God had sent his man Moses to them so that he could lead them into freedom to the Promised Land.
The Israelites had seen great miracles in getting pharaoh to let them go.
The 10 plagues, being led by a pillar of cloud in the day and a pillar of fire in the night, the parting of the Red sea when pharaoh and his army were chasing them so that Israel could cross.
This is a moment in their journey where they are beyond the parting of the Red Sea and are experiencing incredible provision and miracles on a daily basis – a moment where there is a another challenge that needs to again be overcome by faith,
God had done great things.
But instead of rejoicing they start to grumble saying that God should have left them where they were, that they would have been better of.
You know they had been set free from tyranny, from slavery.
Set free so that they may live out there destiny. Yet they couldn’t see it. So often we don’t see it. We don’t see the things that are in front of us. We don’t see when God is speaking very clearly to us about something in our lives that we need to deal with. You see even though God forgives us for all that we have done, we don’t.
This is a saying that I heard..
The sad reality is that God could take them out of Egypt but He couldn’t take Egypt out of some of them.
They had been given freedom, there situation had changed but they had not changed there mindset. They still had a slave mentality.
Let me tell you a story.
The very hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle
§ Day 1: One Sunday morning the warm sun came up pop out of an egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar, he goes in search of some food.
§ On Monday The hungry caterpillar eats through a single red apple
§ On Tuesday: The caterpillar eats through 2 green pears.
§ On Wednesday: The caterpillar eats through 3 purple plums.
§ On Thursday: The caterpillar eats through 4 red strawberries.
§ On Friday: The caterpillar eats through 5 whole oranges.
§ On Saturday: On this day, the caterpillar devours his way through many, many different foods: chocolate cake, ice-cream, a pickle, swis cheese, salami, a lollipop, a cherry pie, a single sausage, a cupcake, a whole slice of watermelon. That night he had a stomach ache.
§ On Sunday: The caterpillar eats through a single leaf, which makes the caterpillar feel better.
Now he wasn’t hungry anymore, and he wasn’t a little caterpillar anymore. He was a big fat caterpillar.
He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself and stayed inside for more than 2 weeks.
He nibbles a hole in it and climbs out and he is a beautiful butterfly.
What a great way for life to happen.
As a caterpillar he was stuck on the ground not able to live out his destiny, and stuck in his situation. Does that sound familiar, do you feel stuck.
But he went through change, change in his body, but what if his thinking hadn’t changed what if he still thought of himself as a caterpillar.
It would have been strange. He would have been trying to crawl across branches and leaves just like before but with great big wings hindering him, that was where he once belonged but he wasn’t designed to act in that way any longer, once out of that cocoon he was designed to fly. You are designed to fly. You are designed to live life.
A new direction
So what do we do with it? This gift called life.
Do I make it count? Am I just wasting what potential God has put inside of me or am I just seeing out my days?
So what stops us from having the life we were meant to have?
Is it my past, I’ve been such a bad person in the past; I did so many bad things that God can’t use me to help others.
I don’t have enough knowledge about the Bible to be able to tell others about Jesus. You know what I struggled with that for years, it held me back, even though I had been preaching I had lead some people to Christ in the back of my mind there was always this doubt that I wasn’t good enough.
Just do enough get through, do everything get involved, and be a jack of all trades but a master of none. You’re not good enough to do anything specific and I’ve hid it well. The Devil loves to steal things away from us. We have dreams and then straight away in come the thoughts that you’re not able to do that and then our dreams start to evaporate or we put them on the back burner, so many Christians are made ineffective in that way and the Devil loves it, but we have an amazing God and if we are reading our Bible and speaking with him regularly then we will know the truth of what God says about us. And these are some of those truths
1) You are a child of God, co heir with Christ.
2) You are a beloved son.
3) You are my Cherished Daughter.
4) I delight in you, you make me smile.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
I am a new creation, it’s a fantastic realization when it happens to you, Christ wants you to have life, the most fantastic life that you can have, He wants you to have Happiness. He wants your life to be full of Joy.
It's easy to come up with excuses to delay our happiness.
I'll be happy." "As soon as I lose ten pounds...as soon as my business grows, when I have enough money, but you’ll never have enough money.
When will you have joy? When will anything ever be enough?
Heard this quote on a children’s film called kung fu panda. I looked it up but no one seems to know where it originates from.
Yesterday is history tomorrow is a mystery today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
God never intended for us to put off our happiness. That's why David said, "This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it." He was saying, "This is the day to be happy; not tomorrow, not when the weather clears up. Not next week, when I don't have to work so hard. Not next month, when I make it through this difficult time." No, choose to honor the Lord right now by choosing to enjoy your life because this is the day that the Lord has made!
Make a decision right now, decide to be happy right now, there will always be something to keep you from being happy, to keep you from the life that God has in store for you Let's get rid of the excuses and make the decision to enjoy life right now, today.
Who wants a life that is just plain ordinary?
Who would rather have a life that’s filled with adventure, excitement and lots of fun? I do
Well as it turns out that’s just the kind of life God wants for us, too. And it’s the kind of life he promises each of us. It doesn’t matter how young or old we are. God has an incredible life for each one of us; we just have to take hold of it.
It’s time to put away the past to let it go, as I said at the beginning.
Our past will have a part to play in who we are because our past helps to shape us but it doesn’t have to be our future.
Painted on the wall in my office is
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
Its all up to you, you have made that decision to become a Christian, will you now let God into the rest of your life?
This is all about choices, before you can move on and develop and build your relationship with God you have to make the choice to commit to building firm foundations that’s why this course is called the Foundation Course.
You cannot build a house without foundations and to lay foundations you need to clear the ground.
Questions for discussion:
1) What can hold you back from having a full life with God (John 10:10)?
2) How do you stop those things from holding you back?
Lets write some of this stuff down and burn it
Things needed metal bin lighter fluid, lighter, car park, water