Sunday Summary…Following Jesus One Day at a Time

Hmmm. What does it take to truly feel clean…to be clean?
I’m so glad God made a way to cleanse us from our sins so we don’t have to go through this! If he hadn’t, and wickedness was in the form of hair chemicals, it might look something like this video:
                                                             I’M CLEAN, I’M CLEAN!
This morning at Brookwood, Fenton Moorhead preached a sermon he entitled, “Following Jesus a Day at a Time.” I went into it thinking I would hear a sermon beginning with “Begin every day with Jesus…” but to my surprise, I saw Jesus in a new light. No matter how old the Bible is, there is always more to be learned. Even when I have read a verse a hundred times, God can still teach me something new.
When saved, we often pray a sinner’s prayer repenting of our sins, asking Jesus to forgive our sins, and to come into our hearts as our savior. Our sins are as far away as the east is from the west. Gone. Forgiven. But what happens the next time we sin? Even though we are saved, we still possess a sinful nature. We are led by the Holy Spirit, but we’re in a battle of good and evil. No matter how “good” we try to be, we still sin. Daily.
I remember a conversation between my Church of God raised husband and his grandfather…
“Grandpa, if the Church of God believes you must ask forgiveness of every sin, will you go to hell if you die before you get a chance to ask?”
“Yep.”
“So if we were riding in this car, and you saw a woman and lusted after her, and then we crashed and died, you’d go to hell?”
“Yep.”
Now, being raised a good ‘lil Southern Baptist girl (sinless as long as I didn’t cuss, drink, or dance, lol), this is not what I was taught. Thank goodness for the “once saved, always saved” southern baptist theology, right?
Well, after today’s sermon, one of those little lightbulbs came on…I don’t think it’s about being “once saved, always saved,” or damned to hell for any sin we forget to ask forgiveness for. It’s about knowing what salvation really means…For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9) NLT
When we can realize and admit that salvation is not something we can work for, buy, or even deserve, but only accept…a gift from God that we must only accept. We must be honest in admitting that without the grace of God we would be nothing. But by his grace and our faithin him, we accept the gift he gave us when he sent his only son to die an excruciating death as the penalty for our sins…all of them.But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. (1 John 1:7-8) NLT

So…God knows our heart. We cannot hide anything from him. As long as we remain honest to ourselves, remembering that we are sinners, and at the same time we are living in the light of Jesus Christ, he will constantly and consistently cleanse and make us new, and we can continue following Jesus a day at a time.
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One God, One Hope, One Choice…It’s that simple.

One God, One Hope, One Choice…It’s that simple.

Now when you read this statement, you might think, “what does she mean it is that simple?” Believe me, when I was in my state of depression, I would not have thought so either. When I felt like I would rather chop my head off that have my migraine continue, nothing was simple. My well-meaning, glass-always-overflowing teenager would say, “think about it this way, it’s better than if you were in a wheelchair or lost your arm or something.”

As frustrating as it was, she (or any of the rest of my family) could not understand my pain because they had never experienced depression, and I pray they never do!

The word “choice” is a key word here. I am not speaking of the “choice” to be happy and not depressed, or the “choice” to be cancer free, or the “choice” to be financially successful. There are, of course, steps you can take to help yourself in any of these situations, but there are some conditions beyond our immediate control, not situations we got ourselves into by “choice”.

The choice I am referring to here is Christ. He is my choice. Choosing Christ over everything else is really the only choice that matters.

Think about the choices you make in any given day:
“What do I wear today?”
“What do I want to eat for breakfast?”
“Should I start housework first or get my errands done first?”
“What should I cook for supper tonight?”
“How should I spend my time today?”
“Should I go the back way to avoid traffic or stay on the highway?”
“Should I buy this dress or is it too expensive?”

The list is truly endless. Everyone’s choices are different from everyone else’s, and they are different from day to day. When we were building our house, someone told me that throughout that process, you will make 360,000 decisions. My guess is that it was even more than that!

Make a list of choices you made this week. Looking back over these choices, how many of them were choices that will still be important tomorrow? What about next week? Next month? Ten years from now?

There is only ONE choice that you will make that will be important forever. FOREVER!!!
That is the choice to accept Christ as your savior and let Him have control of all of your life. Doesn’t that make all of the other choices seem silly?

There is a forever out there for each and every one of us. The choice you make today, right now, may be the choice that determines your forever.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

What else is there?

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