Chuck Norris
Resolutions
Failure--Personal
Failure--Of Idols
Failure--Of the Church
We should know God loves Us
We should know Our Identity in Christ
Make this a year that....
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CHUCK NORRIS posted on Facebook on 1/15/14 that 95% people have already broken their 2014 resolutions.
RESOLUTIONS--put us into bondage of improving ourselves. World sys we are failures and we need resolutions to get better and to clim to God. Even in the church--Memorizing scripture, etc.
FAILURE--PERSONAL
the shame ... my self-righteousness.It happens without notice. It's the air we breathe and the food we eat. It's the incessant need to compare ourselves to others. We need to be the best we can be, or at least to measure ourselves against someone who is struggling to make sure we aren't failing too badly.
It's my brokenness, my mess, and all of my failures that continues to draw me into the arms of Jesus. It is by the grace of Jesus Christ that I see the silliness of the idea of failure and that whatever I am stressing about failing about is just a little blip in MY well-programmed system. The truth is that MY system is broken, badly. And I am in great need of outside intervention. I am in need of Someone who can do for me what I cannot do for myself. Christ has taken my sin, failures, and the weaknesses that beset me, and he's redeemed me at the cost of his own life.
Big and small, every failure, culminates in the failure of all failures.the crucifying of the Lord of glory. The tragic event that happened on Calvary 2,000 years ago was because of your failure and my failure. It was the most epic fail of all mankind. The necessity of the crucifixion of the perfect Son of God exposed us all for the failures that we are. No one is righteous in God's sight-no not one.
When we understand that the cross was about us and our sin and our failure, we see that there is nowhere left to hide. We no longer have to fear exposure. The cross said it all. And as the hymn says, "Jesus paid it all," so we can stop pretending that we really aren't that bad. We can start loving the people around us because we know that we really are that bad and so are they. The shame and the masks and the walls. they all come to a blinding halt. The beauty of the cross is that we no longer have to use fig leaves to cover our shame at our failures.
Apply the gospel to the mundane daily life. The little choices become big paths. Raindrop by raindrop, the mighty rivers are filled.
If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts. Paul spoke aout his many successes (Phil 3:4) and how he counted them all as loss.
Two things we want so desperately, glory (worth, search for significance) and relationship, can coexist only in God.
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FAILURE--OF IDOLS
Idols--Humanism, self, food, music, gym, sports, other religions, etc.
"When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's."― Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
"Have you heard God's blessing in your inmost being? Are the words, "You are my beloved child, in whom I delight" an endless source of joy and strength? Have you sensed, through the Holy Spirit, God speaking to you? That blessing- the blessing through the Spirit that is ours through Christ- is what Jacob received and it is the only remedy against idolatry. Only that blessing makes idols unnecessary. As with Jacob, we usually discover this only after a life of "looking for blessings in all the wrong places." It often takes an experience of crippling weakness for us to finally discover it. That is why so many of the most God-blessed people limp as they dance for joy."
God cares and He cares about us, what we do and who we are. He has made a plan for you and for me in His great foreknowledge all teh way from the beginning of time. (ex: Father's Love Letter, also in other languages)
If we don't realize the love of God, we cannot by filled with His fullness and walk in the fullness (abundant life) He has for us. We desperately need to know His deep love for us. If the church didn't fail us and satan didn't lie to us, then we would know our identities.
HE SAYS, therefore WE ARE
WE think HE says, therefore we think we are.
Disconnected from the WORD!
God speaks to who He has created us as. Gideon (Judges 6:12) was cowering in the basement, hiding from his enemies, when the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him "Might man of valor! The Lord is with you!"
"Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially 'deify.' We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think ourselves as highly irreligious. " ― Timothy Keller
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FAILURE--CHURCH
The world is watching. Millenials leaving the church in droves. Is that all that there is? Then let's keep dancing. Our problems can't be fixed by us.
To-do lists, rather than My Yoke is easy & my burden is light (Matt 11:30). Life coaches, my best life NOW. Immediate gratification. Lightshows & performances rather than worship. Cultural Christianity, Christian celebrities rather than lifting up Jesus. Disconnected from teh Word.
The targets of some of the parables are not "wayward sinners" but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. He wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self-righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.
If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead." ― Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. You can't pick & choose what you want to believe!
The basic premise of religion-that if you live a good life, things will go well for you-is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet he had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.
The gods of moralistic religions favor the successful and the overachievers. They are the ones who climb the moral ladder up to heaven. But the God of the Bible is the one who comes down into this world to accomplish a salvation and give us a grace we could never attain ourselves.
"I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: "If I was saved by my good works -- then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace -- at God's infinite cost -- then there's nothing he cannot ask of me."--Tim Keller
If you try to add to God's salvation you subtract. If you try to add to God's salvation you subtract. If you try to merit God's salvation you haven't believed at all, even if you try to do a little bit.
When we get a good gift, we think we have to give one back, an obligation. Repaying the gift becomes a burden. Works! Little children (Matt 19:14 & Luke 10:21) are just happy to have the gift.
If we say, 'I believe in Jesus,' but it doesn't affect the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven't truly understood or believed in Jesus at all.
Self righteousness--all OUR righteousness is as filthy rags. Isaiah 64:6
Identification with occupations, politics, sexual identity, sins, and identification with causes and diseases rather than with Christ. Even among Christians. Denominations held higher than Jesus! We are the Bride, the Body. Identification should be with Jesus First!
God Says IT IS FINISHED John 19:30 on the Cross. Mark 14:14 to his disciples, it is enough. At the End, Rev. 21:6
All scripture inspired by God 2 Tim 3:16. (Ruach?) Inspiration/expiraton needed for life, the very air we breathe. Nothing nonessential in the Bible. All scripture is for today. Don't give the devil a foothold for unbelief by listening to someone who says a section of scripture was only for that time.
When we don't realize who we are in Christ, our faith will be crippled. If you don't feel worthy to exercise your authority in Christ, then you won't be doing it in the fullness of faith and will lack assurance. Satan works diligently to program people's minds to feel unworthy and unable to walk in power of God here on earth. This is one of the most popular strongholds in existence today in the body of Christ! The truth is that we, by our own power and effort, are unworthy, but it is the Blood of Christ that makes us worthy. And if we say we are unworthy when the Blood says we are, then we are denying the work that Christ did for us on the cross!
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Freedom From Fear!
by Chip Brogden
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love" (I Jn. 4:18, ESV).
Most of our fears are a consequence of not knowing God well enough. Fear comes from uncertainty. If we are confident, secure, and certain about who we are in Christ, and who Christ is in us, then we won't be worried about what the devil might do, and we won't be worried about what other people might do.
ALSO: Most of our sins come from either not believing in God's sovereignity (who He says He is) or His provision (what He says His will do)
"Your private prayer life is one of the key indicators that your Christianity is inner and true and not just the product of your environment."
"Out of weakness comes real strength. Out of repentance and admitting you are weak comes real power. Out of giving away and serving others comes real strength. Out of generosity and giving your money away comes real wealth."
Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God
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Believer's Identity in Christ
Romans 3:24 We are justified (declared "not guilty" of sin)
Romans 8:1 We await no condemnation
Romans 8:2 We are set free from the law of sin and death
1 Cor. 1:2 We are sanctified and made acceptable in Christ
1 Cor. 1:30 We are righteous and holy in Christ
1 Cor. 15:22 We will be made alive at the resurrection
2 Cor. 5:17 We are new creations
2 Cor. 5:21 We receive God's righteousness
Gal. 3:28 We are one in Christ with all other believers
Eph. 1:3 We are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ
Eph. 1:4 We are holy, blameless and covered with God's love
Eph. 1:5-6 We are adopted as God's children
Eph. 1:7 We are forgiven - our sins are taken away
Eph. 1:10-11 We will be brought under Christ's headship
Eph. 1:13 We are marked as belonging to God by the Holy Spirit
Eph. 2:6 We have been raised up to sit with Christ in glory
Eph. 2:10 We are God's work of art
Eph. 2:13 We have been brought near to God
Eph. 3:6 We share in the promise of Christ
Eph. 3:12 We can come with freedom and confidence into God's presence
Eph. 3:29-30 We are members of Christ's body, the church
Col. 2:10 We have been given fullness in Christ
Col. 2:11 We are set free from our sinful nature
2 Tim. 2:10 We will have eternal glory
For many years, I called myself a Christian, but I didn't have a relationship with God. I still went to church every Sunday, and I was a "good" kid. But I did not put my identity in Christ. Instead, I created my identity based on who my friends were, what activities I was involved in, and what I looked like. (How many testimonies begin like this??)
This is one elementary subject that most Christians still don't fully understand, and it is a powerful key to spiritual breakthrough! Don't believe something because some pastor tells you so--Be a BEREAN. Look these things up in the Word of God for yourself and know the truth. For Jesus said clearly that if we continue in His Word, we will know the truth and the truth will set us free! John 8:32, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Satan loves the Church too. It's his favorite playground. He is the father of lies (John 8:44).
The opposite of truth is deception or false beliefs... and will cause you to live in bondage unnecessarily. This subject is no exception. If you see yourself as a failure, you will not be able to boldly exercise your authority in Christ because you will feel unworthy (even after the Blood of Christ has made you worthy). If you claim to be unworthy after the Blood of Christ has made you worthy, then you are denying the work of Christ in your life (and your feelings become your idol! We walk by faith & not by sight 2Cor 5:7)
You are loved by God, not because of what you've done, but because of who you are. The Bible tells us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He longed to have a relationship with you even before you became His child!
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"MAKE THIS A YEAR WHERE...
...We are not trying to fix ourselves but we are looking at the One who has already fixed us
...We don't need new resolutions but we look to the One who has made the Great Resolve
...We look to Christ and not to ourselves to accomplish the work we can never accomplish ourselves"
(Duane Mellor, 1/5/14 service)
And make this a year we thank Christ for our identity found only in Him.
