Recognizing Jesus’ Role in My Life & Knowing How to Respond
In my last blog, Jesus Thinks in Families & Legacies, I talked about how God thinks relationally and generationally. God plants a seed of himself into us in the hopes that we will pass that blessing on from one generation to the next. But where there can be this “generational blessing”, you can imagine that likewise, there can be a “generational curse”. Guess what! Failure is never final. When Jesus enters the scene, all that failure can change. He breaks the curse of sin and shame…including generational sin! So we embarked on trying to fully understand how we can change our generational output. It starts with fixing us first before we can be a healthy example to our disciples, our children.
Getting spiritually healthy involves:
Step 1: Being plugged in to a local Jesus-loving, Bible-believing church. Being committed to connecting with other Jesus people so you can be positively influenced and held accountable to grow spiritually.
Step 2: Understanding Jesus’ role in my daily life and knowing how to respond to each of those roles.
Below are 4 roles that Jesus has in our lives and our appropriate response to them.
His Seat = Worship // My Response = Honor
Honor is a “royal word”. It means acknowledging Jesus as king. It means revering Him and being in awe of Him. It means giving Him the “first seat” or first place in our lives. When we sit before the King at His seat, our response should be to honor and worship Him.
1 Chronicles 15:16 says, “David also commanded the chiefs of the Levites to appoint their brothers as the singers who should play loudly on musical instruments, on harps and lyres and cymbals, to raise sounds of joy.”
When I honor Jesus, He fills me up with joy. This can be with or without music, at church or at home. Anywhere and anytime I am lacking, I can and should call on His name in honor and respect. With Jesus, fear and worry are cast out. Even in hard times, He can fill us with joy.
By acknowledging Jesus every day, expressing gratitude versus starting with demands, it re-aligns my perspective from negativity to joy. Try waking up that way and see what kind of day you can have!
His Voice = The Bible // My Response = Implementation
In Luke 8, “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture.Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown” (v. 5-6).
“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the WORD of God [the Bible]. The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience” (v. 11-15).
Hear the Word. Put it into practice. Then you will bear good fruit.
John 1:1 says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The Bible is Jesus’ voice…He is The Bible! Our duty and response to listening to His voice in our life is to implement what He tells us in His Word. We need to study it, know it, and do it.
Living out the Word. It’s an ACTION. And we all know that actions speak louder than words. Do we live it or just quote it on facebook? Living out the Word. It’s something that’s done in front of everyone. We are known by our fruit but we aren’t born with fruit….it takes hearing the WORD and implementing it. It is the living and breathing direction for our life…when no one is looking and when everyone is looking.
Ephesians 6:17 says to take up “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” It is our one offensive piece of artillery to use when we are under attack. But we can only use it when we have “taken it up”, when we have spent time in it and placed it inside of us. The sharper a pencil is, the more precise the writing. Likewise, the Word must be sharp and fresh in me.
Even Jesus used Scripture against the enemy. Every time Jesus was attacked and tempted by Satan in Matthew 4:1-11, He countered with, “It is written.” Jesus knew Scripture so He was able to stand on it and implement it when trials came.
His Answers = Prayer // My Response = Listen
“Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.” -Mark Batterson, author of The Circle Maker.
The great thing about prayer is that you don’t need a formal time or location to pray. It’s just a way of life, as easy as the thoughts that go through your mind. It’s taking time to communicate with God. But true prayer, great prayer, is about taking the time to listen to God too.
We can and should be specific in what we ask God while we pray. This way we can hear specifically what He says and we don’t have to guess. It gives God the glory when we can look back on His specific answers because we prayed in detail.
Prayer gives you a peace about what to do or what to wait on. We need to listen when we pray so that we can then do what God is telling us…even if it isn’t what we want to do. Likewise, we need to NOT do some things when God tells us not to do them.
It’s easy to be humble in what God is calling us to do for Him yet, very prideful and unteachable in what God tells us not to do. The minute King Saul thought he was big, the second he thought he was worthy of his position, right when he stopped listening to God, was the moment he fell.
His Prompting = Calling // My Response = Obedience
God will use anyone. Significant promotion is almost always preceded by significant trials. Joseph was sold by his brothers and waited in prison for years before becoming governor of Egypt. Moses wouldn’t have ended up in the desert without his grandfather’s betrayal, but the promised land was the end goal. Jesus wouldn’t have made it to the cross without Judas, but that’s a detour that ended in a significant everlasting event!
Each one of these people had been prompted by God and had a calling on their lives. Their obedience to that calling through trials would yield huge historical impacts. What Satan meant for harm God meant for good. God can turn it to good every time. And this same principle goes for your life too!
The Bible uses term: ‘root of bitterness’. Hebrews 12:15 says: “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”
Many of us don’t need to worry about what our background says about us, we need to concern ourselves with what we still say about our background. We need to let it go! We can’t let our past stop us from moving forward to the calling God is prompting us towards. For many years, I couldn't….no, I wouldn’t go back home. My hometown represented hurt and also regret. WEEDS grew up and got out of control the longer I let them stay in my heart.
In Luke 3:7-9 it says, “[John the Baptist] said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
I was sitting on the porch one day watching Shawn pull weeds that we had let go because we, “just didn’t have time to deal with them.” When he went to take them out, it was difficult and took time. When he pulled them out, they had dirt that he couldn’t even shake off because the roots had gotten so wide and spread out. Not only did he have to strain harder to get them out of the earth, but even after they had been pulled out, they left a mess all over the yard and sidewalk which would need additional work to clean up.
Satan isn’t just evil and wants to be “bad,” he is looking to take over anything good and fruitful - to destroy your purity and hope for the future through hurt and unforgiveness. He wants to stop your relationship with God and others so that your are stuck - literally frozen. When Satan is on the scene he is there to kill potential, to kill the seed, and if he can, kill the fruit and calling in your life.
So we have to be diligent. We have to listen to God when he prompts us. We need to move forward into our calling and stop holding onto hurt from the past. We need to recognize that as we move forward, trials will come, and it is our obedience during the hard times that will bear good fruit. We need to be on the look out for the devil and his schemes, and uproot the weeds in our lives the moment we spot them.
Mother Theresa said: “I am but a small pencil in the hand of a writing God”. I love the idea of being a pencil because our inevitable mistakes can easily be erased by the hand of God…. we are forgiven!
As our dear late Pastor, Fulton Buntain, always said, “Failure’s Never Final.”
Being connected with others + understanding Jesus’ role in our lives & how to respond correctly, fully equips us so we can take our pencil and write a legacy each day…a legacy for Jesus.
Pastor Sonny