Faith Does More than Save Us
Notes
Transcript
Light Bulbs
Light Bulbs
You know in the comics when a character figures something out, learns something, or has a brilliant idea, revelation; a light bulb comes on.
One of the things that drives me, it energizes me, when I’m teaching, and a see it in someone’s eyes, the light bulb just came on.
Aha moment!
Some of these are life-changing.
Do you remember times in your life when the light bulb came on?
Your life changed in an instant. Maybe you didn’t realize it at the time, maybe you did.
Do you remember when you learned to read? 1st grade?
Changed your life.
1 telling statistic; over 70% of incarcerated adults cannot read. They are illiterate.
If you can’t read, you can’t learn how to do a job. What’s left is stealing for a living.
You want to make a real difference in person’s life? Teach inner city elementary kids to read.
Do you remember learning to ride a bike?
We grew up riding all over Wichita. Kidnapping, child trafficking we not issue. Cars watched out for kids on bikes even on busy streets.
As a 12-yr old, I was riding across town, 15 mi. to visit a friend or a store, or baseball practice.
I rode my bike 10 mi to middle school. Some mornings in a parka. Not real safe.
Do you remember learning to swim?
Never be afraid of the water ever again.
And the fun! Pools, oceans, lakes.
Learning this stuff, believing it, and applying it changed our lives, forever.
Do you remember learning things in your career?
College, grad school, tech training, or OJT.
Lightbulbs go off when you realize you’ve figured it out and you can do what you enjoy and make a living at it.
Confucius said, Mark Twain said, “Find a job you enjoy and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
As I’m studying these passages, the light bulb goes off in my office, it’s a moment. God reveals something to me.
The HS speaks.
The easiest part is telling you what the bible says.
It’s a little harder, but not too hard to tell you what it means.
It’s nearly impossible for me to tell you what it means to you.
Application.
When those light bulbs come on, they are the brightest.
Whether it’s school work or fun things, learning them, believing them, applying them will change the rest of you life.
But when it comes to Jesus.
Learning Who Jesus is, believing it and applying it will change your life forever.
The impact of our faith in Jesus is not just for after we die. He impacts us every single day. Our faith effects everything.
When you have faith in Jesus, He will save you, satisfy you, change you, and sustain you like no other.
The Christian life is a dynamic life. If a believer mopes around in a daze, spends their time lost and confused, they have not come to experience everything Jesus offers.
Here is it.
Faith in Jesus does more than just save you.
More Than Saved
More Than Saved
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
When you received Jesus.
What that means is, just like when you were taught to swim or ride a bike or read, whatever. You learned you couldn’t do it. You learned how to do it and believed it to be true. So you applied what you learned and now you can swim, ride a bike, and good books, instruction manuals and school textbooks.
You learned something new about yourself and Jesus. And you believed it.
You believed you needed to be saved. And you believed Jesus is the only one who could save you. You couldn’t get yourself out of the trouble you were in.
The application was, you accepted Jesus’s punishment for your own. So, now you’re saved. By faith, you believe it to be true, so it is.
If you’ve done that, you’re going to heaven.
If you haven’t, maybe you need to rethink some of this. Do you believe it? Do you need to apply it?
Now what? Now, do we have to work things out for ourselves?
Does faith end once we’re saved? No.
Now, we continue to live by faith, walk by faith just like we are saved by faith.
What does that mean?
Faith.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Means we always have hope. We are always optimistic. We believe God is at work in ways we can’t see that will turn out good for us.
It means we have a powerful advocate working for us. Things may not go as we expect. But God is at work w/ out best interest in mind.
No matter how tough the situ is right now, it’s going to get better. So, we watch, and expect to find out where God has been working and experience a better situ.
Sometimes God calms the storm, sometimes he calms us.
Paul said we are rooted, built up, strengthened, and overflowing w/ thankfulness.
Interestingly, “rooted” is past tense and done. We are secure and our roots have taken.
The other 3 are ongoing. We are being built up. Being strengthened in what we were taught (that we believed and applied; still learning all that Jesus is), and we are constantly be filled to overflowing. God provides abundantly for us. Gratitude.
Remember, one of the characteristics of maturity is gratitude.
We are constantly grateful for what God is doing.
Growing up in Wichita, in the midwest, I’ve been taking care of grass sense I was 12. Water it, fertilize it, weed it, mow it, rinse and repeat.
Some ppl would set their irrigation to water their grass for 5 minutes every day. It we stay green and grow and look fantastic.
Until we had some extreme weather. Either an extreme drought in the summer or and extremely cold winter. The 5-min daily watering plan did not protect the grass from seasons like this.
I watered every 3rd day for 30 minutes. What that did was soak the soil, the moisture sank deep, so on the non-watering days the roots of the grass would seek the moisture and go deeper.
Therefore, in an extreme season, b/c the roots ran deeper and sought the moisture there, my grass would survive. It would persevere.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Suffering in tough situations when God chooses to calm us and not the storm, forces our roots deeper, and we learn that we can persevere, giving us a stronger character and confirming our hope. Knowing life will get better, keeps us optimistic. And hope stems from faith. Hope grows and faith grows, b/c we see God’s good work even in our tough situations.
So now, when we walk in our growing faith, we have a stronger character and it shows in how we behave in real, practical ways.
We do the right thing. We do right even when it’s hard. Also, characteristics of maturity.
Growing faith in the Right One, Whom we are still learning about, will never disappoint us.
Faith in the wrong one, will eventually disappoint us and leave us emptier than we were when we tried to get filled up by it.
Satisfied
Satisfied
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
Stay w/ Who you were taught. If you’re not getting what you expect, then you might be expecting the wrong thing.
B/C, if you go looking for something else, somewhere else, you will end up emptier than you were when you started looking.
Don’t let anybody convince to look elsewhere. Keep learning about Jesus. He’s not Santa Claus, giving good gifts to good boys and girls. He’s God.
And, sometimes He’ll leave us in tough situations for our own good.
First, he’s the only one who can do for us what we need and want. He is the only One who is God who can
Jesus is fully God and fully capable of saving us and providing for us.
The facts of history prove He is Who says He is and can do what He says He can do.
The single most proven fact in history is the death and resurrection of X. Our faith is fact-based. Jesus as God is factually true.
We don’t know everything. That’s why we need faith. Our faith fills in the cracks between the facts.
Only Jesus can do these things for us.
Second, B/C He is fully God, He is fully capable of filling us up and satisfying us at our deepest level.
That is b/c He created us. He designed us w/ a purpose in mind then equipped us to fulfill the purpose.
Before we came to faith, we had an ID but it was flawed. We could not do what God designed us to do.
Once we came to faith, we give Jesus our flawed ID, and he gives us an new one that fits our personality, gifts, skills, talents and desires that enables us maximize our potential as He equipped us.
When you’re doing what you know you were designed and equipped to do, job, family, hobby, ministry, whatever; it is fulfilling, satisfying deep w/ in us.
I love having a snow-blower. It makes snow removal so much easier on my driveway. But, when I use my snowblower to do exactly what it is designed to do, it empties the gas tank.
Then, it quits. I have to fill it back up to get it to go again.
But when we do what God designed us to do, it fills us up. It’s tiring. It may hurt. But, we leave more satisfied and fulfilled than before we started.
Whatever it is, Jesus will fill you up, every other tempting place to go to find satisfaction will empty you out.
It will leave you emptier than before you started.
Only Jesus can save you and satisfy you like that.
And Jesus is the only one who can change you like this.
Change
Change
In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
There was a part of us that was useless, served no purpose, and it’s been cut away.
Spiritually, our old sin nature, served no purpose in our life. It only caused problems. Jesus cut it away and removed it when we came to faith.
We’ve been baptized by the HS.
Baptize was a common word used in the c.1 by people who made clothing. Shear a sheep. Spin the wool into thread. Every piece of clothing is off-white.
What about reds, purples, greens, and yellows. If someone wanted a red shirt, or green jacket, the weaver would immerse the woven thread or knitted piece of clothing in colored dye.
When it came out of the dye it would look different. The Greek word for immersion is baptize. Once it’s been baptized, it looks different.
When the HS baptizes us, we look different to God on our inside. He doesn’t see the error-prone sinner, He sees the forgiven saint.
He doesn’t see the imperfect person and deficit we create, He sees perfection in Jesus and what Jesus did for us.
We circumcise babies and baptize new believers in water. What we do accomplishes very little. It represents what God does and what he does accomplishes a lot.
The physical acts don’t change anything. The spiritual acts change everything.
Once Jesus has changed us, we are made brand new. We are new creations in Christ.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
The old has been cut away, thrown away, washed away.
The new is here, it’s in us, and it’s alive.
Past tense. We’ve already been raised from the dead and given new life.
This is our new ID that we’re given the moment we come to Christ in faith. A purpose in life and equipped to fulfill it. What got in our way, fogged us up, distracted us; has been removed, freeing us up to become all that God created us to be.
By faith, we’ve been changed. And the implications of these changes make show themselves as we live our lives and walk in this faith in our Savior, whom we are still learning about.
By now you see, the faith that saves us does so much more.
We’re saved, satisfied, changed, and sustained by the same faith.
Sustained
Sustained
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
All of this was accomplished by Jesus when he was crux’d.
An innocent man was executed. God died and served my sentence for me.
We were dead. Now made alive.
Forgiven, not b/c we apologized, but b/c Jesus atoned for the deficit we created. He paid our debt to God for us.
Simply, by faith, believing that it’s true, Jesus made us right w/ God.
There is a powerful authority that did not want us to be right w/ God.
Russian President Putin does not want Ukraine to have a closer, personal relationship w/ the West. And, if he can’t prevent it, he will destroy Ukraine, its citizens and natural resources so there is nothing left for the benefit of the West.
Satan does far worse to us than Putin is doing the Ukraine. If He can’t prevent us from believing in God, He will try to destroy us so there is nothing left for us to offer God in our relationship w/ Him.
But God sustains us, preserves us, protects us from destruction so we can have this relationship w/ Him.
Satan can hurt us, but he can’t destroy us. In fact, He can’t do anything we don’t let Him do to us.
The moment we receive Jesus by faith, we saved, made alive, changed, and fulfilled.
At the cross Jesus broke Satan’s grip on us so that He can no longer destroy us.
We are still weak ppl, but we have the strength of God in us and around us.
We are cracked pots that could be easily destroyed. But under the protection of God we are stronger than the forces of evil trying to take us down.
The HS who baptized us, made us alive, now lives in us. The value to us is immeasurable.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
We are being taught more about Jesus every day. When we believe it and apply it, it changes us.
Our faith grows. We can be hopeful and optimistic in the most dire of circumstances. The bombs could be going off, missiles landing right outside our door, and we could be singing worship songs in our bomb shelter.
A friend posted that video from Kyiv.
It’s real. When we walk in the faith that saves us, we are satisfied on the deepest level, changed in the most significant ways, and sustained in the most dire of situations.
All b/c of what Jesus did for us on the cross.
We don’t have to figure it out on our own, do it on our own, all we have to do is follow Jesus’s lead in our life.
He has given you a new ID, a purpose, reason to get out of bed in the morning, a desire to do it, and the equipment t/b successful.
Learn it, believe it, and apply it.
Walk by faith.
Applications
Applications
Stop trying on your own
Stop trying on your own
Surrender. You don’t have to figure this out on your own nor do you have to try to do your life on your own or in your own strength.
If you haven’t surrendered, yet; when you do, you will experience a relief like you never have before.
It’s not your responsibility to figure it out. It’s your responsibility to follow Jesus’s lead.
Satisfied
Satisfied
Are you doing what God designed and created you to do?
Or, are you doing what you want to do? Or, are you trying to do what someone else thinks you should be doing?
Ask God to show you.
He’s given you a desire to do what He wants you to do. What do you want to do and enjoy doing?
He’s equipped you. What do you do well?
Pursue that and be satisfied, fulfilled in ways you’ve never experienced before.
Survive
Survive
Life is hard. We live in a fallen world. Cancer happens. Tyrants invade countries affecting our lives here.
PPL make decisions and we get caught up in the shrapnel.
We can be hurt. But we will never be destroyed.
You will survive this, or whatever it is that hurting you.
In X, we always have hope, b/c we always have faith. Our rel. is based on faith. We had when we first met Jesus, we have it now.
Believe it. Apply it. You will survive. You can swim. Or, at least read a manual on how to.
Relax.
Whether it’s school work or fun things, learning them, believing them, applying them will change the rest of you life.
But when it comes to Jesus.
Learning Who Jesus is, believing it and applying it will change your life forever.
The impact of our faith in Jesus is not just for after we die. He impacts us every single day. Our faith effects everything.
When you have faith in Jesus, He will save you, satisfy you, change you, and sustain you like no other.
The Christian life is a dynamic life. If a believer mopes around in a daze, spends their time lost and confused, they have not come to experience everything Jesus offers.