The Gospel Beacon

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Whoever does the will of God

For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

Mark 3:35 ESV

How do we know we are in relationship with Jesus? When we do the will of God. Pretty simple when you think of it. Doing God’s will requires knowing God’s will. Knowing God’s will is knowing Jesus and His teachings.

Studying Jesus and His interactions with His heavenly Father will teach us all we need to know about doing God’s will in our lives. Certainly to know that we are in relationship with Jesus we must be living a life of Obedience to God as He did.

Obedience rubs us the wrong way, we like to think we are autonomous and in no need of outside influence in our lives. But just like little children need to learn obedience to parents to mature properly, we too need to learn obedience to God to mature spiritually.

To be a brother to Christ we must learn obedience as He did... “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on across.” Philippians 2:8 ESV True obedience and relationship with Jesus requires us to hand our lives over to God and trust in Him.

So today, let’s begin anew and give ourselves over to God’s care and trust in Him to bring us to the place He has prepared for us.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Endurance

Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. Revelation 14:12 ESV

"The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet." This old chinese proverb reminds me of the above verse. A life of spiritual endurance begins right where you are right now. We are called to endure in the commandments of God and our faith in Jesus. In order to do that we have to decide every day that we will continue in our walk with God. Every day that we choose to continue is one step closer to heaven and our endurance increases with every step.

Spiritual endurance is a lot like physical endurance, they both take training. A runner trains daily increasing the distance they run to build their endurance. For a Christian to increase their spiritual endurance they need to spend more time in the word daily. Time in the word will make keeping God’s commandments and faith in Jesus stronger. When our faith grows stronger our endurance increases.

So today, let’s set out to build our endurance. Let’s spend more time in God’s word. The more we learn about God’s commandments and Jesus, the stronger our faith will become and our chances of enduring till the end of the race will increase greatly. Let’s strengthen our spiritual health and wellbeing.