If the video above is not available, here are two other ways to view:
Short Clip
Measuring Life by
Christ’s Standard
This morning, are you personally following Jesus? Does your day revolve around Him: as you start the day with seeking Him, as you go through the day serving Him, and end the day with thanking Him? Believers are Christ’s personal followers in a Christ-less world.
But, the tricky part of being a Christian is really understanding that we are utterly helpless, in our own strength, to do anything good as Christians. Grace-energized living is the understanding that our flesh, no matter how hard we try, is never able to please Christ.
We have no human powers to overcome temptation and sin or to accomplish any good works. Here is a short summary of what following Christ is all about:
āOur natural life in Adam is called “the flesh,” in the Bible. The flesh has obvious bad traits such as lying, stealing, cheating, drunkenness, and immorality. But the “best of the flesh” (doing our best to serve God in our own effort for example), is equally as bad as far as God is concerned. King Saul’s experience recorded in First Samuel 15 illustrates this point vividly. On the cross, God has said “no” to the flesh, to the law of self-effort, for all time and eternity.ā
The whole secret of being a follower of Christ is to learn, (and to relearn), that only Jesus can live the Christian life. We must give Jesus permission to live His life through us day by day. Paul calls this mode of living “our reasonable service” in Chapter 12.
In Romans 7 Paul shows us that when “I” to do anything to serve God in my own strength “I” will always fail, and when “I” determine to avoid sin by my own willpower, “I” am found to fail. A daily death-to-self is what God asks of me.
God the “great I AM” has taken up residence in my heart–the Holy Spirit has come to join Himself with my spirit. My human spirit is now the lesser, subservient “i am.” This new inner partnership or union of two spirits–my spirit with God’s Spirit–is really a Lover-beloved union of two persons, not a mutually convenient arrangement such as a business partnership. Knowing God as He wishes to be known is an interactive relationship of intimate love–which fulfills the great commandment.ā
And this is the completely new operating system described by Paul in Galatians:
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (2:20)