What's Your Step?
Notes
Transcript
What’s up guys!? I know this weekend looks different from what you expected, but here’s what you need to know… God isn’t waiting for you to go on a conference to do something in your life! God wasn’t disappointed when Josh started making phone calls about canceling! “Aw man! I wanted to grow your students Josh. But you dropped the ball! I can’t do anything with them here!” You get that right? God is just as present here in Athens as he is in Pigeon Forge, right? And God speaks through the same Spirit when you listen to us three pastors and when you listen to Scott Dawson.
Hear me students: God wants to grow you! Listen to him and be obedient.
Today, I’m not going to dissect a passage of Scripture like I typically enjoy doing when I teach, I want to share with you one thing that I wish I had known when I was your age. It would have saved me a lot of heartache, pain, and confusion.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,
Let’s Pray Together before going forward.
Share testimony……..
As I got older, I began to doubt whether I was saved or not. So, I would read my Bible more and pray more and talk with my friends about Jesus more, and guess what happened? I felt more confident in my salvation! But then a few months would go by, I had slacked on Bible study, prayer. I was giving in to sins that I was once overcoming!
Guess what began to creep back into my mind during these times? Am I really a Christian? I doubted whether I had really been saved!
It was something that kept coming back over and over. And I read the verse from earlier, Romans 8:1 and wanted badly to feel that there was now no condemnation for me, but when I found myself failing as a Christian, I doubted.
God finally helped me see that the emphasis in that verse is not in the “no condemnation” part but in the “those in Christ Jesus.” I learned about the idea of “union with Christ.” And it changed everything for me!
Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 1
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will: To the faithful saints in Christ Jesus at Ephesus.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ.
For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him.
He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace
that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding.
He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ
as a plan for the right time—to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in him.
Do you see how many IN CHRISTS there are? This is salvation language. Paul and the other NT writers use the terms “with Christ” in christ” “through Christ” and “into Christ” in many ways through their letters to convey that someone has been saved and to define what they have received as a result of that salvation.
In the context of Ephesians 1… Paul is helping the church at Ephesus understand a great point: You cannot earn for yourself what has been freely given to you.
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—
not from works, so that no one can boast.
You see? we are not saved by our works, we are saved by CHRIST’S WORK on the cross on our behalf! He absorbed all our sin and shame and the judgment we deserve because of our sin and he died for it instead of us! Through that death, he made a way for us to be with God.
I may not be sharing life altering news with you there. But let me go back to my life for a moment...
Why did I feel confidence in my salvation only when I was being obedient to God? If salvation is freely given to me in Christ, why did it feel like I had to work for it?
This was my misunderstanding of my union with Christ...
The things I do for the Lord do not make God love me any more and my sin doesn’t make him love me any less. IN CHRIST, I am fully and completely loved. But my sins do affect my COMMUNION with Christ. That is my ongoing, daily relationship with him! When I sin against God and do not repent of that, that sin pulls me away from the depth of relationship I have with God.
My union with Christ will always be completely secure, but communion with Christ is always flexing: getting better or getting worse. When I am actively seeking the Lord, I can feel that closeness. And I enjoy that as a believer! But when I am seeking my own way instead of his, I feel that distance!
It’s much like my marriage. There are times when I don’t love my wife well. I don’t serve her and my family like I should. That affects our relationship. But it doesn’t change whether I am married to her! Whether I feel close to her or not, we are married!
A good husband does whatever he can to serve and lead his wife well, not to earn her love though. In fact, a good husband trusts that his wife loves him yet serves and leads so she knows that she is loved too!
The sweet spot for a believer is resting in the salvation piece, knowing that God has saved me from my sin when I couldn’t save myself. Yet also, serving God through an obedient lifestyle and choices.
So my question for you is this...
As you think about next steps you need to take in light of the messages you have heard today, which relationship are you trying to fix?
Are you trying to fix your union or your communion?
If you are trying to find salvation in your actions, you never will! The Bible is clear that God does the saving! You can’t pile up enough good deeds to find your way back to God. The Bible gives two pieces of advice for you today and promises that God wants to do these things in you...
Repent - Means turn from your way and to God
Believe - Trust that Jesus is the only one who can fix your brokenness.
Today, you can receive Christ and be saved tonight! Experiencing true UNION WITH CHRIST.
If you know that you are a Christian, then I want to challenge you to rest in that. Stop trying to earn what God has already given to you. Yet continue to serve and be obedient to the things God has spoken so as to improve your ongoing relationship with Christ, your COMMUNION with Christ!
What will you do with what God has spoken to you today? Don’t leave without making plans for your next steps.
The band is going to come back up and begin to play, we will have counselors available to talk with you about whatever you have going on, whether you know you need to repent and believe in Jesus or you are just struggling with doubt, or you know that you are a believer but you need to take some next steps! They are here to help you!