What is the Message we Should be Living?

There is value in returning to the basics of what we say we believe and live. God has been continuing to take me back to that. A few days ago, I wrote about what our lives should be all about – that they should be all about God’s glory and God’s fame. He does His work in our lives to point to Himself, not to make us great. (You can read that post here).

The question I’ve been pondering lately since then is: What is the message I should be sharing with the world around me? And what does it look like to do that?

Whether it’s in the words we say or the things we choose to do or not do, our lives and our words are preaching  message to the world around us. What is that message? The one I’m currently sharing with the world? And does it line up with the one I should be sharing as someone who claims to be a follower of Christ?

Paul talks about the message that we should be sharing many times in his letters to the early church in various cities.

“. . . but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:23)

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who dies for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-18)

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:7-10)

As I dig into God’s Word to find an answer to my question, it comes back to one thing – the core message is Christ crucified and risen. And through that, forgiveness of sin – God’s grace that allows us to enter His presence.

Whatever I’m doing, whatever I’m saying, it should all be pointing back to the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This doesn’t change just because I’m not someone gifted in evangelism or called to preach from a pulpit. In my ever day life, I should be living and speaking this to the people around me. That is the message that my life should be all about.

Back to the Basics

What is the core of everything our lives should be about as followers of Christ? What should our lives be all about?

I've been pondering this question a lot lately. As a person who loves to wrestle with the lard truths and the passages of Scripture that can sometimes be challenging to understand, it can be easy for me to miss what my life should really be all about. Wrestling these Scriptures out is a good thing - a necessary thing. But it becomes a problem if it's all I do.

Sometimes, I need to, we all need to go back to the basics and remind ourselves of what that is.

In Luke 4, Jesus quoted words from the prophet Isaiah and stated that day they were fulfilled in their hearing (Luke 4:16-21). As I look back in Isaiah to the passage Jesus read, it becomes clear that the basics are all about Jesus.

     "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
          because the Lord has anointed me
          to proclaim good news to the poor.
     He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
          to proclaim freedom for the captives
          and release from darkness for the prisoners,
     to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour
          and the day of vengeance for our God,
     to comfort all who mourn,
          and provide for those who grieve in Zion -
     to bestow on them a crown of beauty
          instead of ashes,
     the oil of joy
          instead of mourning,
     and a garment of praise
          instead of a spirit of despair.
     They will be called oaks of righteousness,
          a planting of the Lord
          for the display of His splendor.
     They will rebuild the ancient ruins
          and restore the places long devastated;
     they will renew ruined cities
          that have been devastated for generations."
                                                                (Isaiah 61:1-4)

Jesus began His ministry by declaring He had come to do exactly these things.

These verses in Isaiah also give us a reason why Jesus came to do these things. Verse 3 tells us that we "will be call oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor." It's the last phrase that is important here.

Everything God does in our lives is about His glory and renown. About it making His name great.

When we get back to the basics of what our lives as followers of Christ should be all about, this is what it comes back to. It's all about making God's fame and glory known. Whatever we say and do has to be all about making God known and for His glory. If we start there, then we're starting in the right place.

Change Your Perspective

Two steps forward . . . one step back . . . one step forward . . . two steps back . . . two steps forward . . . one step back.

Life often feels this way - especially our spiritual lives. We gain some ground in an area and then we discover we're going back again. If we notice, we can change direction again before we go all the way back.

In those moments, it can feel like we'll never get beyond this - like we'll always struggle in that specific area. We feel that because we're only seeing a small part of the whole. In that moment when we feel like we failed again all we see is the distance between where we were and where we are now. The distance we fell.

But, we're missing the bigger picture when that's all we're looking at. We're only seeing the distance we fell, not the greater distance we've come. That greater distance can only be seen when we pull back from the immediate. It requires us to change our perspective.

Changing our perspective doesn't mean we ignore what just happened or pretend it's not big deal. Changing our perspective gives us the motivation to get up and keep moving forward. As we see the journey we've been on that includes many moments of what looks and felt like going backwards, but we also see that overall we've been moving forward.

In those moments when we've fallen and gone backwards, we can be assured that we follow a God who gives us the opportunity to get up and try again, with Him helping us move on. Many of our heroes in the Bible have this as their story - Abraham, Moses, David, to name a few. They all had failures and struggles, but they got back up and kept going with God.

In our moments of greatest failure and struggle, we easily get discouraged if we focus only on the failure or the struggle. But, when we remember all that ground we have already covered with God walking with us, we have the courage to get back up and keep going.

Sometimes to change our perspective, we have to be intentional about remembering it all. We have to go back and remind ourselves of it all. Remind ourselves where we were and how far we've gone with God. Remind ourselves of all the second, third, tenth, hundredth chances God has given us and how eventually we walked it the way God was trying to take us.

Where are you right now?
Can you see the bigger picture of the whole journey?
Or are you lost in the latest failure or struggle and in need of a perspective change?