Discipleship

Lord and Savior

March 10, 2016 by Tim Sherfy

You cannot separate having Jesus as your Savior and living your life in obedience to Him. Christ cannot be your Savior if He is not your Lord. Yet there is very prevalent teaching out there insisting the only thing required of you is to pray a simple prayer and Jesus will then be your Savior. Not only is this a dangerous teaching, it is altogether unbiblical.

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The Bible says we must first make Him our Lord, and then we will be saved (Romans 10:9). It doesn’t say we can be saved and then perhaps make Him Lord of our life. Acknowledging His Lordship comes first and must be present if we are to experience His incredible gift of salvation.

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Selfless

February 29, 2016 by Tim Sherfy

Are you selfless? I’m not talking about being a person who readily helps others. That’s part of it, sure. But a truly selfless disciple has forsaken everything for the love and mission of Jesus. When we are selfless, we no longer think of ourselves. We think of Jesus, and we think of how we might reflect Him to others. Society does everything it can to convince you life is all about you. You deserve to have nice things, a nice place to live, a good job, and a sense of safety; you deserve to be comfortable.

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Except you don’t. As I’ve said before, what you (and me) deserve is to spend eternity separated from our Creator. We spend the bulk of our days in abject rebellion to our professed “Lord”. We deserve nothing good. But our selfishness convinces us it’s not true. We listen to society and live selfish instead of selfless lives.

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Abundant Living

February 25, 2016 by Tim Sherfy

When we have surrendered ourselves to the purposes for which God created us to do, we are as willing to be deprived of our personal dreams and happiness as we are to celebrate them. I think it’s a key to knowing whether or not we have fully committed our lives to Jesus. Are we as happy when our dreams are taken from us as when we are excelling in them?

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When we understand the character of God, we will comprehend our fullest, happiest, and most enjoyable life comes from being fully alive in His presence, regardless of what circumstances may be swirling around us. There is a confident peace and comfort when we have given ourselves fully to Christ.

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Are You Doing Enough?

February 22, 2016 by Tim Sherfy

A question I often ask myself is, “Am I doing enough?” I’m not talking about earning our way to Heaven by trying to do enough good things (impossible, by the way). But having been given such a great gift from God, we have the responsibility to respond. He has lavished so much upon us it is inconceivable to then go through our lives wanting to give nothing in return.

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We can’t pay back God, but we certainly can demonstrate our gratefulness through our obedient actions. With that in mind, ask yourself, “Are you doing enough?” What is our honest answer to that question?

Reverse the Curse

February 18, 2016 by Tim Sherfy

When did we start believing the idea was to live in as much comfort and enjoying as much pleasure as we possibly can until our time comes to die? It’s nowhere in the Bible. In fact in the very first pages we see that sort of Utopian existence destroyed and our planet cursed with the sin which had been invited in. In the beginning, it was all about God. Nothing has changed.

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It is still all about God. Except somehow, somewhere along the way, we began to think it’s all about us. We were created to worship God, but what most of us ever worship is ourselves. We put it in much more congenial terms like, “God wants me to be happy”, or the pathetic, “I deserve this”. It’s as if we think we can reverse the curse and live in our own self-created paradise.

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