I'm quite tired and it's late, so I'm going to make this one quick. After yesterday's writing about giving up the burden of that $72,000 to Jesus I decided today to look into what Jesus tells us to do when it comes to following him. Jesus is very clear that we need to put everything else aside in our lives and focus on following him. We are to focus on Jesus over our own families (Luke 9:61) and over our grief (Luke 9:59). Earlier in Luke 9, Jesus is very clear with what we must do, as we read in 23-25 "Then he said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?" It doesn't matter what we focus on if it's not Jesus first, that will result in nothing if we aren't focusing on Jesus first and foremost. Focusing on your job, or school, or family are all things that we should do, but we absolutely must put Jesus first. We must deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him. The best part is that our cross is so much lighter because Jesus died on the cross for our sins to carry our burdens for us. So in order to get closer with Christ, deny yourself, you must first be humbled and then follow Jesus. For what good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet lose their soul? 

Prayer:

Dear Jesus, 

I pray that I can truly deny myself and follow you. 

You are the rock that I should build my foundation on. 

You should be the main focus of my life, 

Lord please help this be the case. 

I pray for those who need to deny themselves and follow you, 

and I pray for those who do follow you but still need to daily take up their cross. 

I pray for in the future days that I take up my cross day by day and truly follow you. 

In Jesus' name I pray, 

Amen. 

Listen Here: https://goo.gl/kFPwjt

I was originally called to ministry when I was in the 5th grade, so when I was like 11 or 12 years old. I felt this overwhelming presence come over me and I knew it was God and he called me to be a pastor at that moment. But I said no, “No Lord. I am not worthy” or something along those lines. I thought I had escaped this call at that point and continued to do my own thing. Again in the 7th grade he called me to be a pastor and to preach his gospel. Once more I replied “No Lord. I am not worthy.” Again, I figured that would be it. I was attending FMYC as a Freshman in highschool, I came for fun and for fellowship, but would happen at Colorado State University that summer was not what I had been anticipating. I was in my dorm by myself doing a devotion, I remember the devo was something along the lines of “turn to random place in the bible and pray about what is on that page. Then read it and pray again.” I turned to a page with Romans on it and I prayed about whatever that page would say. Then I read it. I became stuck on 11: 29 which in the NLV reads “God does not change His mind when He chooses men and gives them His gifts.” I prayed and prayed and cried a bunch, but in the end, I surrendered to God's call for me.  So that’s why I am here.

1 John 4:7-12 (NIV)

God’s Love and Ours

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

I read a story about a tiny chick that was abandoned by its mother after a storm. An orange tabby kitten found it. This kitten absolutely destroyed this chick and had it as lunch. That chick no longer got to live its life due to the actions of this kitten.  Actually, that didn’t happen.  Did it attack the chick? No, it didn’t, instead it watched over the tiny chick, all throughout a spring in Russia until it became large enough to care for itself. When this kitten could have easily had an easy meal, it instead showed love. If this kitten can go against the natural order of things and show love to a tiny chick, surely we can show love to one another.

But what does the bible say?

What must we do? “Dear friends, let us love one another”

Luke 10: 30-35 (30 in reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’)

Earlier in this passage we learned that an expert of the law stood up to test Jesus and asked “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” This passage can be summarized in this phrase “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself”

Where does love come from? “For love comes from God.”

Romans 5:8 “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

How great is the love of God that he would give his one and only Son to die for our sins. And how great. Great of a love from his son who was born of a virgin. Who lived in order to die. In order to take our place.

I personally love basketball, like; I truly love the game of basketball. It makes me happy, to play it and even to watch it, I love it. There is nothing more exciting than when the team you are rooting for hits that buzzer beater for the win. There’s just nothing like it, the cheers that erupt from you sitting at home and the fans in the stands along with the other players on that team. It’s such a moment of glory, for all of us as fans, hey; we won. Jesus hit the greatest game winner of all time for us when he died on the cross for our sins. Every time I think about Jesus’s game winner for all of humanity I can’t help but smile, oh the eternal glory that came with that game winner. Our sins have been forgiven because God’s son was born of a virgin, and lived to die. To win the game for us.

How important is love? “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

1 John 4:16 “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. “

1 Corinthians 13:1-3“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

Like I said before, I love basketball and well anything competitive at all. I am super competitive, anyone who knows me really well will agree.  My competitive nature makes it hard for me to show love sometimes; this is especially true when playing basketball. Anytime I have a teammate who makes bad play after bad play I straight up ask them “Seriously, what are you doing?” and make comments like “This is ridiculous” and “stop shooting the ball”. I recognize that these all hurt the other person and make me into a bad teammate. I struggle with showing love every single day, but I strive to be like Jesus and that’s the best that I can do.

How did God show his love?  1 John 4:9 The New Living Translation says this “God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. And then back to the NIV for verse 10.”This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. “

What happens when we love one another? “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

If you don’t like basketball, I do apologize for all of the basketball analogies, but they just make sense to me. In a game of basketball I love the phrase “teamwork makes the dream work” because it does. If we show love to one another then life is just easier. When you don’t show love to one another then it’s just like going 1 on 5 in basketball, it just makes things harder on you. You have 4 other teammates on the court, but you have so many more people in this church and not just this church, but a church as a whole,  that if everyone just united and showed love among one another, the church would so much better off.

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

This verse says that if we love one another, God lives in us, and that his love is made complete in us.  God promises to live within us as long as we love one another in the same way that God loves us, we must first know God in order to truly love. The only way to truly have his love complete within us is to love one another.

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

This verse has such a strong message. Without love, we are nothing. It doesn’t matter how strong your faith is, or how good of a person that you are,  no matter what gift that God has given you, if you don’t love, you are nothing. .

I’ve had many people throughout my life show me love. My entire family has always been there for me in times of need. I’ve always had a pastor that I can go to for anything and a church family that supports me in all I do.  I have some super close friends that are there for me 24/7 on anything from questions about pre calculus to questions about Jesus. God has blessed me with a whole bunch of amazing people that I do sincerely love and I thank him for everyone that he has blessed me with every single day, as without them I don’t know where I would be.

I am blessed with some amazing grandparents, they are all some of my favorite people. Most kids my age think that their grandma’s house is ‘boring’. Luckily for me, this is not the case, but it’s not about that. It’s about the love that they have for me and I for them. My grandparents all have this unconditional love for me. They’ve all seen me at my greatest, but also at my worst. It doesn’t matter how bad I get or if I say some hurtful things for them, they are always there, they are always loving me. Any decision I make, they support, even if they don’t truly support it, they love and support me and they support those decisions because of that.  There’s not a single thing I wouldn’t do for my grandparents and I know for a fact that there isn’t a single thing that they wouldn’t do for me. This starts and ends with love.

“7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”