Christian Living

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Matthew 22:37-39, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
38-This is the first and great commandment.
39-And the second is like unto it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

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RELIGIOUS DUTY:
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Many people in the Church today, who have been a Christian for many years, they still do not understand who they are in Christ Jesus. "I'm a Christian," you hear people say, but the question is, what does it mean to be a Christian? So many people who come to church are only coming out of a sense of `religious' duty, not because they truly love the Lord God with all their hearts.

Much of it's traditional training, whereby, its expected for you to darken the door of a church somewhere on a Sunday morning. But once you've pulled `church duty' you're free to go and do your own thing for the rest of the day. God says in His Word that we are to keep the Sabbath holy unto Him. That is, we're to talk about Him throughout the day and make Him the center of everything we do.

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PRAISE HIM BEYOND THE CHURCH WALLS:
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We're to praise Him and remember all the good things He's done for us beyond the church walls on Sunday morning. Everyday, from Sunday to Sunday, we’re to count our blessings of the Lord and be thankful. And once we leave the church building, God is still to be the center of our attention, not some football game on TV or some other activity that's centered on self-interest. The Israelite children were reminded over and over again that they were to remember the God who had delivered them from out of the slavery of Egypt. Their remembering wasn’t to be once a week on Sunday’s when they were pulling “religious duty” but they were to remember the Lord God each and every day.

If it was important for those people to remember God and all He'd done for them, how much more important is it for us today to remember what Jesus did on the cross of Calvary for us as individuals and for the whole world? It's extremely important because within that mindset of purposeful remembering and meditating on the good things that God has done for us through the finished work of Jesus on the cross, we are brought neigh unto God through reconciliation.

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STANDING IN LOVE AND GRACE:
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We can now have an up close and personal relationship with God, the Father. It's within that relationship with the Father, through the shed blood of the Son, Jesus and being empowered by the Holy Spirit, that we begin to "know" who we are in Christ. It’s also when we begin to know more of who Christ is in us. We begin to get a revelation that first of all, we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Through the blood of Jesus, we have been brought to a place of "right standing" with God again.

Man lost this `right standing' with God in the Garden of Eden but through the cross, Jesus bought us back from the kingdom of darkness and delivered us into the Kingdom of God, whereby we could now be His righteousness in the earth before all people. We could once again be in `right standing' with God, the Father and have an intimate and close relationship with our heavenly Father.

God's love for you and me supercedes anything we can think or imagine with our minds. God's love is beyond our human comprehension; therefore, we have to accept God's love for us individually by faith. God has created each individual person unique, with a distinctive personality unlike anyone else. He value's you and me. We matter so much to God that he sent Jesus to the cross in our place to die for each of us and pay for our sins so we could be saved and live throughout eternity with Him in heaven. What love. What grace and mercy. God didn’t want to be separated from you and me any longer, therefore Jesus came. He came to be the mediator and to connect us to the Father once again through the perfect sacrifice of love.

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BE SURE OF YOUR FOOTING:
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As we go into this New Year of 2003, I want to ask you, where do you stand with God? Is your footing sure in Him? Do you know without a shadow of a doubt that if you were to stop breathing this very moment that you would instantly be in the presence of Jesus? If you’re not 100% sure of where you stand in God, that is, whether you’ve truly been born again of the Spirit of God, you can know today without question. How, some of you may ask?

Romans 8:16 says, “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” The Holy Spirit will let you know through your spirit, as He works with the Word you’ve heard that you really have been born again and you’re a child of God. You can know that you know, when you pass from this life, you’ll be in the presence of Jesus forever. Praise God! That's such good and comforting news to those who have been struggling with whether they really have been saved or not. For those who have not been sure of their salvation; for those who have yet to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, I invite you now to pray out loud this prayer:

“Dear Lord Jesus, I want to thank You for going to the cross for me. I thank You that you shed your blood to pay for my sins and you gave your life so that I could be free from sin and live in eternity with you one day.
Jesus, I believe that You are the Son of God. I believe that You truly died, was buried and was raised from the dead and that you’re alive now. I ask you now to forgive me of all my sins and wash me as white as snow by your blood.
Come into my heart and save me, be the Lord of my life and restore my soul. Transform my life from the old to the new and fill me with your Holy Spirit. I renounce the past and all associations with Satan and his household, and I say that Satan is no longer my god. Jesus Christ is my God and Him only will I serve from this day forward. Thank You, Jesus for saving me and setting me free. Amen.”

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RESPONSE:
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If anyone prayed this prayer and you meant it from your heart then you are, right now, a “new creature in Christ Jesus, old things have passed away and behold, all things have become new” (II Cor.5:17). Now, do one more thing, tell someone.

Confess to someone else or to a crowd of people that Jesus has saved you , “For with the heart man believe unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom.10:10). And one other thing, anyone who prayed this prayer, I’d like to hear from you. I’d like to know how the Holy Spirit has ministered to your heart through this out-reach. Praise God for His free gift of salvation to the world! “For by grace are you saved through faith; and not of yourselves lest any man should boast. It is the gift of God” (Eph.2:8).


Plain As Day Ministries

Shirley Williams
12-27-02

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