Nov 20, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms 1st Church CLT
Nov. 20, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms
John 15:11 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+15%3A11&version=NKJV
The final testimony is the life we live. Not simply our religious strictness, nor theological stances, but our lives. The people who know you see more than you will admit. They know about how miserable we are. About how fearful we are. About how content we are. Seriously, they know.
We can’t be miserable people and then say to the world, “Oh, by the way, Jesus loves you.”
I did a google search and this is the searches most often asked: “Why are Christians so...”
...angry?
...hypocritical?
...judgmental?
...un-Christian?
…negative?
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
How To Live a Miserable Life
1. Try to earn salvation
2. Neglect spiritual disciplines
4. Live selfishly
5. Go it alone.
6. Compare yourself to others.
7. Believe that happiness is a destination in your future, not a decision in your present.
Garden of Eden—Eden means “delights.”
Adam and Eve are in a garden with a thousand trees of yes and only one tree of no. But they convinced themselves that God wasn’t enough and what he had given them—their lot—wasn’t enough, what happened?
Did their lives get better? Did that go well for them? No, they found themselves empty, alone, and fearful.
We have inherited their nature: Every single one of us is born thinking that what we need to finally find contentment is something we do not have.
John 15:11 reminds us: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+15%3A11&version=NKJV
Joy is something God has purchased for you in the Here and Now!
“To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
