Matthew

Two Ways to Live

January 22, 2024 by Tim Sherfy

There are two ways to live. You can follow God’s perfect way as revealed in His Word, or you can subscribe to the wisdom of man. Every single one of us will choose one of these two ways to plot their course through life. Choosing God means abandoning your life to Jesus. It’s a path of surrender and few will go this way. The alternative is to rely on the wisdom of man.

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This path is wide and you’ll find plenty of company along the way to share your journey. Neither way will be free of struggle. Life in this world comes with a heavy dose of pain, discouragement, and defeat. The choice between the two ways to live, then, comes down to your motivation, not whether one path is easier than the other.

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Standing Firm

January 11, 2024 by Tim Sherfy

It has been said if you can’t stand firm, then you won’t stand at all. We see this proven out in our spiritual lives. No one can claim they stand for Jesus if they won’t stand for Him under trials and difficulties. Standing firm means to stand without wavering. You can’t be a warrior for Jesus one day and live your life as if He wasn’t Lord the next.

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In Ephesians 6:10-18, Paul tells us to always be prepared for the day of battle by putting on the full armor of God. If we do that, we will hold fast to Christ regardless of what the enemy sends our way (Ephesians 6:13). The easiest way to not lose our footing is to never take our eyes off Jesus, never stop delighting in His Word, and never stop reminding ourselves that our life is not our own (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Galatians 2:19-20).

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Never Stop Giving

December 21, 2023 by Tim Sherfy

If you study the life of Jesus, you will see He set the example to never stop giving. Everywhere He went, Jesus was giving something to someone. Sometimes it was as dramatic as giving sight to the blind (John 9:1-7) or cleansing an incurable disease (Matthew 8:2-4), and sometimes it was as simple and subtle as giving peace (John 14:27). In every Bible story in the gospels, you find people needing something from Jesus and Jesus providing it for them.

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Not once do you read about Jesus doing something selfish. Not once do we find Him taking a break from His mission to just chill out and mindlessly relax. Even when He got away by Himself, it was to bask in the presence of His Father (Mark 1:35-38). The life of Jesus was one of service. Are we measuring up?

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Eternal or Temporal

December 14, 2023 by Tim Sherfy

Every day it becomes more urgent to devote our lives to God and to prove our love for Him by the way we live. We don’t work to prove our love to God, but we live in obedience to His commands as proof of our love for God (John 14:15). If we love Him, our lives will reflect that fact and will not look like the lives of those who oppose God.

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Everything we experience in life will have either an eternal or temporal value. Jesus teaches we should focus on the eternal things that do not rust, rot, or decay (Matthew 6:19-21). Meanwhile, we live our lives seeking and consuming the temporal things that never last and leave us feeling emptier than we felt before indulging in them.

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We Must Keep His Commands

December 7, 2023 by Tim Sherfy

Last time (see “Do We Love Him?”), we began to contemplate whether the love we have for Christ is genuine. Because of the importance of this topic, we’re going to continue thinking about it today. Jesus said many would come to Him thinking they know Him, but in fact do not (Matthew 7:22-23). So many are deceived by the “easy believism” and faith without consequences teachings of our day that Hell awaits a multitude of people who think they are in Christ but will find out He never knew them.

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It’s why this subject is of vital importance, one we do well to consider with great soberness. Nothing is more important than your relationship with Jesus. We do not know Him if we do not love Him, and we know to love Him means we must keep His commands (John 14:15).