A Simple Definition of Christian

1 John 2:2-6, 9-11, 15-17  records, “I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But

if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When He served as a sacrifice for our sins, He solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s. Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep His commandments. If someone claims, “I know Him well!” but doesn’t keep His commandments, he’s obviously a liar. His life doesn’t match his words. But the one who keeps God’s word is the person in whom we see God’s mature love. This is the only way to be sure we’re in God. Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived. Anyone who claims to live in God’s light and hates a brother or sister is still in the dark. It’s the person who loves brother and sister who dwells in God’s light and doesn’t block the light from others. But whoever hates is still in the dark, stumbles around in the dark, doesn’t know which end is up, blinded by the darkness. Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.” MSG

 

Summing up these verses as a Christian definition: obey Jesus by living like Jesus who displayed God’s love by loving people and not the world. Simple not easy. Our constant wanting is hard, whether it is wanting pleasure, power, or possessions. People are hard, they irritate and aggravate us. Obedience is hard, dying to self, making others more important than myself, serving constantly, giving generously, forgiving unconditionally, overwhelming!

 

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CBMC Has A Solution To America’s Real Epidemic

James 5.19-20 encourages, my dear friends, if you know people who have

wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God. MSG

 

The true epidemic in America is our wandering away from God. The number of people who neither know God the Savior in Jesus, nor obey His commands acknowledging Him as Lord of their lives, is greater than at any time in our history. Who’s responsible for this? (more…)

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Finishing Well As A Christian

Hebrews 12.1-3 asks, Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the

 

way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! MSG

 

The key to finishing well in this Christian life is to stay focused on the eternal life to come. They key to finishing well in this Christian life is not to focus on comfort, ease, and accomplishment in this world but to focus on receiving God’s praise, approval, and reward in the next world. Difficulty from serving God, persecution from men for acknowledging Jesus, suffering for conviction of God’s truth, are badges of honor, are means for making us like Jesus, and are proof that we are in Him and He is in us.

 

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