GospelLife360 Podcast: Recent Episodes
Jeff
GospelLIfe 360 is about discovering how the gospel of Jesus Christ impacts and transforms our lives on a daily basis. It's discovering who Jesus is what He has done what He is doing and what He has promised to us by HIs mercy and grace. This is not a gospel about us but about how the gospel brings us hope, life, and the freedom to know love and extend that love to others.It's not just about going to heaven but about knowing Jesus Christ in a life-changing way! Come and join us in discovering the GospelLIfe 360!
The days we live in seem to be getting darker with each passing day. We attempt to ignore it in order that we might not be overwhelmed by it. In John 3:19 God's word tells us that this is the judgment, that light is come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. Men fear exposure!
But there is a darkness that we find that belongs to us, and we must not allow it to rule our lives. We don't have to fear exposure, for our God sees all and has provided the grace and freedom for us to deal with our darkness. We must come into the light of His presence.
Shame, guilt, and fear were never meant for us to carry very long. Sometimes our shame, guilt, and fear have been brought on by those who have hurt us deeply. We've attempted to deal with those painful sins on our own, only to create a deeper darkness with our weak substitutions.
Sometimes our darkness is of our own making. We've allowed our own sinful choices to become a growing cancer that permeates our body, soul, and spirit.
Jesus calls us to, Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest, I am gentle and humble in heart!
How would you define faith? Hebrews defines it as the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
But Jesus described people's faith as little faith, no faith, and great faith. None of us can remain on the mountaintop of faith every day, so how would you rate your faith right at this moment? How would you rate it over the last 3 months or year?
How is our faith impacting our lives, our family's lives, our neighborhoods, where we work and play, and the church we attend?
There are some Scriptures I would like to share with you today that I hope will take you from where you are in your walk of faith to a place that will allow you to see the glory of God in a way that you have never seen it before!
In Ezekiel 22 God tells us that he was looking for a man to stand in the gap and build up a wall to stop the oppression and the wrong that was being done to the most vulnerable of their time, but Scripture tells us that He found no one!
When good men do nothing evil prevails! When good men do nothing our children who are among the most vulnerable in our society are allowed to be swallowed up in the darkest of evils!
We know these things are going on, but we choose not to think about it. We close our eyes to it and it continues to become even darker day by day!
In Ezekiel 16 we are told that God destroyed Sodom, not because of sexual immorality but because they lived in arrogance, abundance, and careless ease, and did not help the poor and needy!
This problem of human trafficking is a huge monstrous problem, and it will not go away overnight! But we as followers of Jesus Christ can do something! We can find the most vulnerable in our community and begin to build walls and stand in the gap, being faithful to what Jesus died for and gave to us: FREEDOM!
Even as believers and followers of Jesus Christ, we struggle with who we are as a new creation in Christ. We are constantly wrestling with who people think we are and what we attempt to tell ourselves that we are that the reality of who Christ says we are gets lost in the noise.
Being in the world but not of the world can many times confuse how we see ourselves. For all believers, no matter how long you have been a believer, this battle is real. Our desire to fit in and be accepted messes with our identity. We want to be successful in this world and success distorts our view of who we are in Christ.
Scripture tells us that we have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives within us, but most of us still remain living under our old identity.
It was for freedom that Christ died, but we find ourselves living under the bondage of our old nature and identity.
Paul describes his new identity this way; I am who am I by the grace of God! God's grace was what defined his new identity. Let's look at some other Scriptures and discover an identity that allows us to live as new creations and walk in the freedom of the Sons of God!
Over the past couple of years, I've had numerous casual conversations that ended up gravitating toward church and faith. I didn't guide them that way, that's just where they went to.
In those conversations I've heard the same story told with differing circumstances, but the same end result. People leaving the church or giving up on God. The pain, disappointment, and frustrations are real. The wounds and scars are visible.
I believe the church as a whole has chosen to focus on the low-lying fruit. The Ministry of Reconciliation for the above folks will cost too much for most churches to commit themselves to over the long haul.
I'm looking for people who like me find this disconnection heart-breaking and desire to see how God could use them for His glory and Kingdom.
I'm finishing up a website called Vagabondfaith.com. A place to share their testimonies, find encouragement and find resources to start afresh in their journey of faith.
My hope and prayer is that we can help people find their "Oikos". The Hebrew word for family. Family in this sense meant anyone within the household and those outside the household that we did business with or lived life with.
These "Oikos" were small enough (20-50) to know one another, yet not so small we didn't have the resources to serve one another or serve our communities in a loving way.
We should only be doing what we see the Father doing, and this is what God is showing me right now!
Any questions or comments contact me at myvagabondfaith@gmail.com
Where is our faith if we do not trust in the sovereignty of God?
Romans 8:28 is shared with numerous people when they are going through difficult times as words of encouragement. But the verse begins with the words, "And we know". What do we know? We know that God causes all things to work together for good! Do they? Well, that depends on whether you believe God is in control and is working through your difficult circumstances for His glory and eventually for your good!
Is God sovereign if you do not see the good in things until you enter His glory? Is God sovereign if your circumstances get worse before they get any better?
Can you say with Joseph, what others meant for evil, God meant for good? When we quote Romans 8:28, we must keep it in context with the Scriptures that surround it, in order to understand the promise He is making to us.
Let's open up that Scripture once more together and let the promise become fresh and new to us once again for the days that lie ahead!
The Church is still trying to rediscover itself after the Covid-19 pandemic. I'm not really sure if we've learned all that God intended for us to learn through those difficult days.
Many churches have made some adjustments when it comes to social media and adding online digital services to reach out to those who have found church online to be more necessary or convenient.
But, where is the real fruit of the gospel being planted in the lives of those listening? Are we still counting the numbers that are showing up in person and online for our indication of fruitfulness?
God builds His church! He adds to the church day by day as we faithfully make disciples who make disciples, who go into all the world with the gospel!
What is the overall soil situation in our churches? Is the seed of the gospel falling on good soil? Are we equipping the saints for the work of service or are we managing volunteers who have shallow rocky soil?
We will see the fruit when we start cultivating the soil with the whole gospel!
The words that we speak and the promises that we make may be well-intended and spoken with the utmost sincerity, but in reality, they can fall short of expectations as well as our own.
But when God speaks there is no wavering from His intended purpose. Because His ways and our ways are not the same, we can sometimes misinterpret the final outcome, because it didn't happen as we expected or in the time frame we thought to be appropriate.
When E. F. Hutton speaks, the commercial says that people listen. They do until their investments take a nose dive.
When God speaks, not everyone listens. But the rest of His creation does. Think of the story of Jonah. God spoke and the waves, big fish, and a worm carried out His bidding.
Let's open up the gospel and discover the importance of us listening to God's voice, and trusting that what He has spoken will accomplish everything that He intended for it to accomplish!
We have questions thrown at us every day. Some of those questions are insignificant, but there are a few that become life-changing in our lives. They set the course of direction and purpose. These life-changing questions usually have a high price tag attached to them.
The Scriptures tell us that God's Word is living and active. But we should not think that we can casually read His word and maybe memorize a few key verses and think we have all the understanding we need.
We need to look intently into the Word of God and as we do we must be honest with what we see and ask the difficult questions of what God is desiring to do in our lives. Then by faith, we must be obedient to the answer to our questions. We are going to look at a few sections of Scripture where we might discover the questions and answers that will transform our lives into the image of Jesus Himself. Join us!
Faith! Is that which is hoped for the conviction of things not seen! We can make it so simple sometimes, but is it? Salvation is a free gift of God, but faith is not just simple trust, but a total surrender to the One who is the object of our faith. There is no such thing as "faith in faith."
Saving faith comes to us from God! It's an extension of His amazing grace. Each one of us has been given a measure of faith. But is the faith you claim to have "enduring" faith! It's the endurance of our faith that will eventually indicate whether we had genuine faith, to begin with.
Allow the Word of God to speak to you on this issue of enduring faith!
We can easily find ourselves becoming so confident in what we do that we forget that Jesus said we can do nothing without Him. We live most of the majority of our days without the least acknowledgment of God's presence or purpose.
Even when we are faced with circumstances that are beyond our ability to perform, we forge ahead and do the best of our ability to accomplish the task anyway.
Though we are part of the Body of Christ we live and breathe our lives in prideful isolation.
God's word has plenty to say to us concerning our thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think.
The Body of Christ is suffering and our personal lives are unstable due to our attempts to live life outside of God's sovereignty.
How much of your life is lived outside of God's sovereignty?
Many times we come across someone that looks very familiar and we ask, "do I know you?" They may look familiar, but sometimes people may have familiar features and mannerisms, and not be the person we know!
We may know intellectually someone that we have read about in a biography or history book, but that does not mean we know them.
We claim to have 500 friends on social media, but again that doesn't mean that we know them.
So, the question arises, do you know God and does He know you?
Let's open up the gospel and examine whether or not we know Him and whether He knows us.
WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT? We do a lot of good things in the Name of Christ, but are they really God's good things or just good things that we have done in our flesh for our flesh?
Seems like an easy question to answer doesn't it? Our flesh can easily justify "good" things and place them under the heading of God's things.
I believe if we look at the Gospel we will discover that there are certain qualifiers that define what things are good and come from God and are for God!
Only the brave should enter here! Let's get serious about being faithful to what God has created and called us to do!
The wisdom of the world is unstable and unreliable, but the majority of people today, including many within the church put their trust in it. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways and the man who attempts to follow after Jesus Christ and trust in the wisdom of the world will live an unstable life.
The wisdom of God is Jesus Christ Himself! This wisdom is a mystery to the world we live in. This wisdom comes to us through the Holy Spirit as we walk in reverence with our Savior and Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
The wisdom of God is pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, and good fruits, unwavering and without hypocrisy! The wisdom of the world is earthly, natural, and demonic.
Are you living according to the wisdom from above?!
What does it really mean to live? And in what sense does it mean, to die is gain?
Before God in His grace pursued us in His love, and saved us we were dead in our sins. We may have been breathing and our heart was beating, but we were dead spiritually. We may have by all practical purposes looked successful to the watching world, but without Christ, we were still dead in our sins.
Many professing Christians believe in what Jesus did for them on the cross, but the reality of the life that was brought forth because of the cross and the resurrection is a mystery to them.
If you have put your complete trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ; He has become your life! Life is no more defined by who you think you are, the status or title you have, or what the world has labeled you to be.
To live is Christ, and to die is gain. We must as Paul put it, to die daily that we may gain Christ who is our life!
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Whoever came up with this quote couldn't be more wrong. Words hurt! Words have brought more divisions and wars than anything else we could talk about.
Scripture tells us that words bring forth death or life. A child's life is formed by the words they hear growing up. Marriage is strengthened or destroyed by the words each spouse speaks into it. Businesses grow or collapse by the words spoken over a period of time. Churches thrive or close their doors because of the words spoken by their members.
Entering another election year the words that we are hearing through media outlets and social media platforms are so divisive and filled with hate. And much of the words we are hearing that are so hateful are coming from those proclaiming to be followers of Jesus Christ.
If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, all that I ask is that you take a few minutes to listen and right down these Scriptures, and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to you how we should use our words, making the most of every opportunity for the gospel.
There is a great deal of church hopping going on today, and now this issue has hit the fever pitch as podcasts and church online have given our consumeristic onlookers more options to choose from.
They have their shopping lists of what they are looking for and expect from today's church. What is extremely sad is that most of what they are looking for is not biblically founded. It's about programs, methods, and styles of worship. It's about shorter messages that are non-confronting.
But then those who are a little more familiar with Scripture, will hear a message from Acts chapter 2 and realize that the right answer is described here after the events of Pentecost.
For church folks, this is the best description of what church should be, and the church we should all want. But behind the answer we know is right, is the lack of commitment and sacrifice to make this kind of church a reality.
God said that He would build His church, but many churches thought that God needed a little help. As we read through these few sections of Scripture today, take a second look at what God intended for the church to be, and ask yourself, is this what we are becoming?
The gospel is the power of God for salvation! But the power of the gospel doesn't come from our persuasive words or wisdom. The transformational power comes from the revelation of that gospel through the Holy Spirit.
We are to be the voices crying out in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord to reveal His salvation to those He draws to Himself. We are the instruments of reconciliation as the love of Christ controls us, freeing the Holy Spirit to work through us.
The word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword piercing as far as the soul and the spirit.
Our faith is manifested in the power of the gospel and the working of the Holy Spirit bringing revelation to the glory of God in the face of Christ.
Much of the deadness and lukewarmness in the church today is the result of man attempting to do something that only God can do through the gospel. Many who are sitting in pews today are holding onto a man-made salvation.
They are searching the Scriptures to discover eternal life but are unwilling to come to Christ for the life they are searching for. They are not coming to Christ because they have seen the glory of Christ and the depravity of their sin, but rather they are searching for some self-preserving approach to avoid being crucified with Christ and dying to themselves so that Christ might become their lives.
If you are uncomfortable with what I am saying, I would plead with you to look closely at what God's word says, and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the glory of Christ and the power of the gospel.
One of the Greatest Disconnects of God's calling upon men today is found in Gal. 2:20. "We have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.
There was a dramatic shift in who we are and how we live life on the day that Jesus Christ came to take up residence in our lives. For many men, not much changed on that day, if that day indeed happened. Many still live pretty much as they always did except now they attend church and call themselves Christians.
God has told us that He has come to abide within us, and we are to abide with Him if we ever hope to live out this new life that He has called us to. What does it mean to abide in Christ, and what does that kind of life look like?
Open up your Bibles and let the Holy Spirit get real and personal with you, as we discover what the gospel has to say about abiding with Christ.
Did you prepare for today? Did you prepare for this week? How about this month or year? We would like to think that we are prepared for at least the day we are living in, and maybe we are to some degree.
We need to take responsibility for the things that are in our lane each day, but we can never be prepared for everything that the world confronts us with. Our greatest discouragement comes from the fact that we have convinced ourselves that we must be prepared for everything.
In the midst of all our preparations, we must acknowledge and humble ourselves to whatever preparations that God has already made beforehand. What God has prepared beforehand for us is so much greater than what we could ever imagine.
What we struggle with is, that what God has prepared for us usually never takes the path to get there as we thought it would. We miss many of the things that God has prepared for us because when God goes left, we continue going down the path of assumption straight ahead of us.
God will always prepare our hearts for what He has prepared for us.
Open up the gospel with me and discover the greater things God has already prepared for you!
Control or the lack of it creates such anxiety and fear in our lives. Even when we have done all that we can to create a safe and secure situation, we know living in the world we live in, we are never in complete control.
The more we feel the control slipping through our fingertips, the more we try to control the things and people in front of us.
The level of control in our lives indicates the level of faith we have or do not have in the God who is truly in control of everything around us.
Faith is that which is hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen. So, how much do we truly live by faith, and how much do we persist in wanting to control the outcomes?
Is it any wonder why the Lord tells us repeatedly, to fear not, and wait upon the Lord?
Fear is a part of every one of our lives. Fear was given birth in the Garden of Eden when man sinned against God, and attempted to run and hide from Him.
Today, fear comes in many shapes and sizes. It reveals itself when we least expect it. We can all be caught off guard and startled by some unexpected event or circumstance. Its when we allow that fear to remain in light of Who Jesus is, and what He has promised.
Fear erodes our faith to the point we find ourselves attempting to control everything around us including the people that love us. The more we attempt to control the more things become unstable around us. That double-minded man syndrome.
Let's open up the gospel and discover how we can disarm the fear that attempts to steal, kill and destroy our lives.
We are all created in the image of God. But we are all born into this world with a sinful nature. We don't become sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. The natural bent of our heart is toward the flesh and satisfying its desires.
When God calls for us to train up a child in the way he should go, it requires us as parents and adults to cultivate his heart to hear the voice of God and discover what glory He has created him for.
As we see the rise in numbers of kids who are leaving the church after the age of 18, and as we see more and more kids who have never heard of the gospel of Jesus Christ; even those just down the street from our churches, something has gone terribly wrong.
We have an obligation not only to our own children but to those who have been placed in our places of influence. Our neighborhoods, churches, schools, communities, and those who are being helped through non-profits and governmental programs.
With the breakdown of the family, this problem has become an epidemic in our country. Your children may have grown up and left the house, and you may or may not have grandchildren, but you have some children in your sphere of influence that you need to make the initiative to cultivate their hearts before the thief is able to kill, steal and destroy!
We can no longer turn a blind eye and make our comfortable and convenient excuses. What will the Lord find you doing when He returns?
The Titanic was one of the greatest shipwreck events of all time. It was said the architect and builder of the Titanic thought his ship was indestructible. Someone heard him say, that God Himself couldn't sink his ship.
The portion of the iceberg the Titanic saw above the water line was not a threat, it was the iceberg that extended below the water line that sank the ship. So many lives, families, and communities were drastically changed because of that event.
Over the years we have seen prominent pastors and church leaders suffer shipwrecked lives because they drifted off course. These are very visible in the media today. But the even greater tragedy is, that there are so many others within the church that have drifted off course and found themselves broken, and their lives and homes destroyed.
They seemed to be managing their faith that is above the water line, but underneath within the heart, there was danger lurking, Our hearts can drift into the shallows of our flesh, and worldly desires until the impact of the sin shatters our lives.
How can we avoid our faith becoming shipwrecked? Open your Bibles and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal how far our faith has drifted. Don't become another statistic for the world to use against the glory of God and His salvation.
How much time, energy, and resources do we expend in our efforts to justify our existence? We can feel so inadequate in who we are, that we find ourselves constantly on the defense as we self-justify the image we have portrayed to others around us.
Our lies and insecurities have us working overtime in the futile game of justification. In and of our flesh we are incapable of maintaining the justifications we make.
News flash! If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have been justified already. You are not perfect or complete, but in the eyes of God, you have been justified, redeemed, and reconciled by the blood of Jesus Christ.
Whatever life we live beyond the cross and the blood applied to our lives, should be acts of love, not attempts to justify ourselves before our loving God.
If you are not living under the freedom that comes in Christ, or if you are not experiencing the peace that passes all understanding, you may have stumbled back into those fleshly efforts of self-justification again, and have fallen from grace.
The justification that comes through Jesus Christ comes through His finished work on the cross. There is nothing more for you to add to that work.
Matt 11:28-30 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 "Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. 30 "For My yoke is easy, and My load is light."
Most of us who have been in church long enough have heard many sermons and teachings on confession and repentance. Sometimes repetition can numb us to the reality of both of those.
I believe a great deal of our complacency and apathy in the church today is not so much the repetition of the messages we have heard, but the lack of understanding and application of God's call for a full confession.
The word confess means to agree with God! We may agree with God that we have sinned, but we are not confessing why we sinned, or why our hearts chose to live selfishly instead of depending upon God for His provision and timing.
If God knows the motive and intentions of our hearts, I'm sure the Holy Spirit is attempting to convict us of those motives and intentions.
There can be no true repentance without a full confession. Complacency is formed in the soil of casual confession. The reason why most of us continue in the cycle of sin confess, sin confess, and sin and confess, without any real change of mind bringing about a change of action, is our superficial lives of confession.
Explore the Scriptures with me and let's discover God's design for a full confession.
As followers of Jesus Christ, God is in the process of transforming us into the image of Christ Himself from glory to glory. He didn't save us to make a better version of us.
This transformation doesn't happen without the intervention of the Holy Spirit and the power of the gospel.
From the very beginning of our new life in Christ, the word of God has brought confrontation into our lives. We were first convicted of our selfish, self-serving sinful lives, revealing our hopelessness and lostness without Christ.
Jesus is the author and perfector of our faith. What He started He will finish, but not without confronting the self-righteousness of our flesh. Our flesh will not give in without a fight.
The Apostle Paul stated that he saw a different law in his members waging war against the law of his mind and making him a prisoner of the law of sin which was in his members.
Paul also said that he died daily to his flesh. Sanctification and transformation will not happen without the confrontation of the truth confronting our pride and sinfulness.
Avoiding the confrontation for comfort and convenience will only deter our transformation. Salvation is a free gift but transformation will always cost you something.
Men's discipleship is suffering for a number of reasons. But one of the foundational issues is our lack of love for one another and our fear of confrontation.
Many men are struggling and suffering in silence. They are drifting from the place God has called them to, and no one cares enough to go after them.
Men have allowed some sin to remain in their life, and because of the guilt and shame associated with it, feel trapped and alone in their brokenness.
In Galatians chapter six we are given the admonition to restore that man who is caught in that trespass, whatever that trespass may be. It calls out to those who are spiritual to be an instrument of restoration.
A spiritual man is not a perfect man, but a man who desires to walk by the Spirit, with a heart of love, gentleness, and grace. God is the One who restores! We as spiritual men are to be faithful in the moment, with the man that God has placed in front of us. We are to make the initiative by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by faith, watch the power of healing grace do its work.
Evil is the darkness that pervades our whole society! There is no place to escape from it. From wars between nations to the hostility that resides in many of our homes.
Parents try to protect their children from it, and communities attempt to use law enforcement to curtail it. Churches preach against it and politicians create more laws to legislate against it.
Evil was given birth in the garden of Eden and continues to be handed down to every new generation. Evil is a heart issue. Evil is anything we do that ignores and lives outside of what God created us to be. Evil is any form of unbelief!
God is love. The opposite of love is not hate, but selfishness. When we live selfishly, we open the door for evil to prevail. The majority of our attempts to curtail evil are focused on the words, weapons, addictions, and the divisive categories we put each other in.
If we do not deal with the selfishness, unfaithfulness, and unbelieving hearts that we have, the darkness will continue, and evil will destroy everything in its path.
Jesus Christ and the power of the gospel are our only hope!
I've been married long enough to know that when I get that look from my wife, without her saying a word, she is saying, "are you really going out looking like that?"
I think I look just fine, but I know if I'm going to leave the house I'm going to have to at least change the shirt that I'm wearing, especially if I'm going somewhere with her!
As Christians, we can become really comfortable with our casual Christian walk and lifestyle, but the Holy Spirit is saying, "are you really going to represent Me in the world you are living in looking like that?"
There are two main outfits (if I can use this analogy) that we can put on as Christians. We can put on the righteousness of Christ, that He has given to us through His finished work on the cross, or we can put on our self-righteousness, as we continue attempting to prove we are okay and acceptable to God.
To us, they can appear indistinguishable, but to God, they are so far apart. Let's discover what the Word of God has to say about these two outfits, and how we can tell which one we have on.
On our journey through the Beatitudes, we have come to the place where many people sitting in the pews will most likely get off the bus.
When Jesus says that we are blessed when we are persecuted, many begin to squirm in their seats, and their minds begin to go off into never-never land as they attempt to block out the truths of our faith journey.
When you and I walk in the life that has been described in Matthew chapter 5, it's not a matter if we will be persecuted, but when.
Jesus said that if the world hated Him it will also hate those of us who are following after Him. The darker and more distant our world gets from the life that Jesus calls us to live, we can expect the persecution to increase.
Here is where I believe comes the greatest falling away from the faith that the church encounters. It's that place where we become complacent and lukewarm.
In our attempts to avoid persecution, we compromise on the foundational truths given to us in the Sermon on the Mount.
All of the attributes of the Beatitudes culminate here at the crossroads of faith and persecution. Will you get off the bus or continue the journey in following Jesus Christ?
All I want is a little peace and quiet! Have you ever heard that said, or maybe you are thinking that right now!
Our problem with peace is that the peace that Jesus speaks about and the peace that the majority of people are looking for are most likely not the same.
We read in the Scriptures that there is the peace "with" God, and there is having the peace "of" God. We can have both of these at the same time, but not always.
We have peace with God because we have been reconciled back to God due to HIs death and shedding of blood on the cross. The peace of God is something we know by walking in faithful fellowship with Him on a daily basis.
If you are living a casual Christian life and walking in lukewarmness, you can never know the peace of God. Jesus Christ is our peace! Knowing Him in your everyday circumstances allows you to know the peace that passes all understanding!
Join us in this journey of Peace!
We continue discovering how we can maintain a heart that doesn't drift into lukewarmness as we travel through the Beatitudes.
Today we look at Matt. 5:8 where Jesus proclaims that blessed are those who are pure in heart for they shall see God. James tells us that this is pure and undefiled religion, that we remain unstained by the world.
The world produces complacency when allowed to defile the gospel message and the faith we are called to walk in. Out of our hearts come the foundations and essence of everything we are and live by.
Join with us as we go through God's word and discover what it means to have a pure heart.
With all that has gone on and continues to go on, marriages have come under fire from all directions. Couples can barely find time to take a breath, much less find time for one another, and become one as God intended for us to be.
Work, kids, appointments, the house, the yard, the neighbors, and the church all seem to be crying out for our attention.
We can feel our relationship slipping away, but it gets pushed to the bottom of our priority list, because of the next emergency that arises.
We search Google and YouTube for anyone that might have the best and quickest answer, but it all seems to be nothing but a word salad that only brings more confusion and frustration.
I pray that you would take just a few minutes to listen to what the gospel has given us, that we might find some healing, hope, and joy in our marriages.
As we open up the gospel, I want you to see the main theme in this Marriage Counseling 101 time together. We live out of the overflow of our relationship with Jesus Christ. If our marriages are faltering, it is because our relationship with Jesus Christ is faltering.
Let the gospel speak new life into your marriage!
No, we are not going to talk about the Christian song group!
We are going to look into the gospel and what it has to say about the mercy of God and the transforming power it should have on our lives.
When we forget or take for granted the great mercy that has been extended to us from the Father of all mercies, we will definitely drift into lukewarm casual Christianity.
We have been examining ourselves as we travel through the Beatitudes to see if we have possibly slipped into being lukewarm as the word of God portrays the last church age to be in the book of Revelation.
We've examined ourselves by asking, are we walking in humility, are we maintaining a sensitivity to the sin that we sometimes justify, do we have a gentle spirit, do we hunger and thirst for righteousness, and today, do we live with a heart of mercy because we have been shown mercy?
We can't live out one of these without the other. Humility is the foundation, but each of the rest builds upon the others.
Are you living a lukewarm life? Has your church become lukewarm in its dedication to the Risen Savior?
Our bodies were created in such a way by God, that we have a natural response to satisfying our hunger and thirst needs. We can become unhealthy physically when we attempt to satisfy them with unhealthy food or drinks.
But God has also created us with a desire for Him. He tells us that He has placed eternity within each one of us and that the eternal void can only be satisfied by His abiding presence.
He tells us that we can find satisfaction if we hunger and thirst for righteousness. But like our attempts to satisfy our physical hunger and thirst with those things that are unhealthy, we many times try to satisfy our spiritual hunger and thirst with self-righteousness.
An unhealthy spiritual life will lead us to that place of casual Christianity and lukewarmness. Unhealthy eating habits lead to obesity, diabetes, heart issues, and so many other debilitating health issues.
Self-righteousness leads to compromise, complacency, a hardened heart, and a falling away from the grace that was provided for us on the cross.
How are you satisfying your hunger and thirst?
We continue our journey through the Beatitudes. We are discovering how we can examine our lives to ensure we do not find ourselves living like the Laodicean church in the book of Revelation. LUKEWARM!
We have discovered so far that we must walk in humility which is the foundation of everything else we will discuss. The next thing we discovered is that we must maintain sensitivity to our own personal sins. Not just say that we have sinned but to agree with God in the fullness of what they are.
Today we are going to look at the importance of having a gentle spirit. The Greek word for gentle means that we have strength under control. This is a self-control that is the result of being under the Spirit's control.
Jesus said that He was gentle and humble in heart and that we were to take His yoke upon us and learn from Him. So let's learn.
On our journey of examining ourselves to see if we fall into the definition that Jesus gives to the church in the last days; being lukewarm, we are using the Beatitudes as our examination tool.
Not only to examine ourselves but also to use as our foundation to keep from drifting into that lukewarmness. In Matt. 5:3 we've already discussed the humility that needs to be considered and now we will look to Matt. 5:4 and our need individually and corporately to see and deal with the sin in our lives.
We know that Scripture tells us that where sin abounded that grace abounded all the more, but we must never take the grace for granted and allow sin of any kind to remain in our hearts or minds.
Let the word of God speak!
As we spoke last time concerning the lukewarmness of the church as we live in the last church age of Laodicea, we now will look to the Sermon on the Mount to discover how we can prevent ourselves and the church as a whole from becoming those casual Christians.
Humility is the foundation of our relationship with Jesus Christ that keeps us from being conformed to this world and becoming lukewarm.
There is no sanctification, no transformation, no fruitfulness, and no walking by the Spirit with living a life of humility
We are living in the last church age as we look to Revelation and its revealing of the Lukewarm Church. Many of us would try our best to separate ourselves from this defining statement given by Jesus, but the reality is, His word is not up to our own interpretation or justification.
Are there people in the church today faithfully serving and proclaiming the gospel, as well as making disciples? There are! God has always provided for HImself a remnant to move His kingdom forward. But if we are going to be faithful to HIs word, we must be willing to examine ourselves as well as the church we are placed within to see if we are truly taking up our cross and following Jesus Christ!
His words in Revelation chapter 3 are troubling! They are more uncomfortable than we would like to admit. But to ignore them or justify them away is extremely dangerous. His words to the Lukewarm Church are a loving expression of His love and grace, but they carry eternal consequences if we do not repent!
We are told in Scripture that we are not to be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
But that transformation is not into a better version of ourselves, but into the image of Jesus Christ! This transformation is what allows us to experience the freedom that comes from knowing Jesus Christ and walking in fellowship with Him every day.
Transformation is impossible for us to accomplish in and of ourselves, it is the work of God in us and through us in everyday life and circumstances.
Taking up our cross and following Him is paramount to our transformation. Also, vital to our transformation is our faithful obedience as we serve within the body of Christ.
Salvation starts at the moment of our salvation and continues as God works out the fulness of that salvation as we enter into glory with Him.
Jesus is the author and perfector of our faith, as well as the author and perfector of our transformation.
Transformation is focused upon the image and glory of Jesus Christ, and not the image we desire or our glory. The fruit of the Spirit is the evidence of our transformation.
The Apostle Paul said, that I am what I am by the grace of God. Grace is what defined him. He discovered that when he was weak it was then he was strong through the grace given to him through Christ.
If God's grace is so amazing, shouldn't it be seen by the amazing life we are living to the glory of God? If it is in our weakness that the glory of God's grace is revealed in power, what is the watching world seeing concerning this amazing grace?
Is God's grace truly sufficient for you, and how is this amazing grace transforming your life to become more like Christ?
There are so many men sitting in the pews today that are hiding in plain sight. They are religiously busy but their busyness is nothing more than their futile attempt to hide from God's calling on their life.
They have chosen comfort and convenience over the cost of carrying their cross and following Jesus wherever He goes.
There is a cost to hiding and there is a cost to us as men not taking up our cross daily and serving the One who has redeemed us and reconciled us back into a relationship with the Father.
Understand gentlemen, you can run but you cannot hide from the God who called you!
Come out of your hiding and into the glory of your Heavenly Father!
This is not about exposing the darkness of this world, for that darkness has become brash and unashamed to live out in the open every day.
We as followers of Jesus Christ need to expose the darkness that we have allowed to remain in our own hearts and lives.
This is about the desires that are naturally ours by God's creation but those in which we attempt to satisfy outside of God's will and design.
Our flesh and spirit are in opposition to one another, and if we allow our flesh to choose the means of satisfying our personal desires we will find ourselves living in the darkness that comes from our sinful choices.
Exposure is never a comfortable thing, but we have the grace of God that is sufficient for us to overcome the darkness that remains in our hearts.
This is not an easy journey, but it is the only journey to our freedom and peace.
Every day we write another chapter into our life's story! Many times the chapter we are writing does not play out like we hoped it would have.
A great deal of the anxiety we struggle with comes from our frustration and disappointments in our life's story being played out differently than we have written it.
Did you realize that God has already written your story out to its final details? If we would just understand that our freedom and fulfillment are found in living out the story He has written out for us!
Open up the gospel with me and discover the amazing story God has prepared for you. If you try to save your story you will lose His. But if you lose your story for His sake and the gospels you will find the beautiful story He has for you.
When Jesus Christ becomes real when His word is more than a set of principles for you to live by; life as you once knew it changes.
Of His fullness, we all have received, and grace upon grace.
When His word becomes flesh in our life we will begin to be transformed from glory to glory.
When we realize that we are a temple of the Holy Spirit and that His glory abides within us, our desire will be to glorify Him in all that we do.
Has HIs word become living and active in your life? Are you living for HIs glory or your own?
How can we believe when we seek the glory that comes from man?
Scriptures:
John 1:14,16; 2 Cor. 4:3-6; 2 Cor. 3:14-18; 1 Cor. 6:19-20 John 17:22-23; 1 John 1:1-3; John 5:44; John 17:4
Faith! Is it real? Is it changing my life? Is it impacting the lives around me?
Scripture calls us to examine our faith. But how do you do that? What determines if my faith is real or just manufactured by my self-righteousness.
Scripture again paints a vivid picture of what real faith looks like.
Take the test and see!
We are saved by grace through faith and it's not of ourselves lest any one of us should boast. But Scriptures warn us that our faith can rest on the wisdom of men (1 Cor. 2:1-5).
Could it be that your faith is based upon the persuasion of some pastor or teacher and not from the Holy Spirit coming in power to bring grace and life through the power of the gospel?
When God's word speaks, gives us a warning, or asks us to give an account for the faith we have, we should listen!
How do we serve as men in the world we live in? If we believe that the coming of Jesus Christ is near how urgent and passionate should we be in our serving?
If Jesus would come at the end of this day what would He find you doing? Would He find you faithful to what He has called and gifted you to do?
We say, Lord Jesus, come, but are we really ready to give an account of our faithfulness right now? As dark as the world is becoming are we being the light of the world He has commanded us to be?
Will you have a faith that endures to the end that you might have salvation?
If we are living in the last days how are you serving in the last days?
It's a couple of days from Christmas and people are still busy buying last-minute presents. There are times when we receive gifts that we are not so sure what to do with them. The heart was right but we're not really sure if the gift we've been given we will ever use.
The gift of eternal life that has been given to us by our Heavenly Father is a gift many times never really fully experienced or understood. It's more than the forgiveness of our sins and going to heaven someday.
Join with me as we discover the fullness of this gift and whether or not you may have left it unwrapped all these years.
Loneliness is not a respecter of persons! Whether you are CEO or the janitor, rich or poor, valedictorian or school dropout, we all struggle with loneliness. Especially during these holiday seasons, we struggle even more so with the memories of our losses and the loneliness they bring into our lives.
When we suffer loss or disappointment God has given us the capability to grieve that loss. It's when we are unable to let go of our pain that loneliness takes us to places that we do not believe we can recover. We deeply question God's love for us or even if God truly exists.
Our salvation and God's grace and love are not guarantees against suffering.
Overcoming our loneliness is not about ignoring or pretending we haven't suffered loss. God is not offended by our crying out to Him concerning our loneliness, the Psalms are a picture of His people voicing their hearts complaint.
During this Holiday Season, voice your loneliness to God and then find your comfort and refuge in His love.
All of us have struggled with unbelief in our lives, sometimes several times in a short period of time.
When our faith is tested and our circumstances seem to be more than we expected or understand, what we say we believe can fade away before our eyes.
There is always grace for us in our struggles with unbelief, but we need to understand what the gospel has to say about it, and the dangers of where it can lead us too unexpectedly and dangerously.
Join me in this journey of growing in faith and overcoming our doubts and unbelief.
We make all sorts of preparations for things we are committed to and responsible for. Especially during this holiday season, we are overwhelmed at times with all the preparations.
But as followers of Jesus Christ, we are missing out on the most important things in life; the things that God has prepared for us. He tells us that these things are what the eye has not seen, nor the ear has heard, or even what the heart can comprehend.
So, are you prepared for what God has prepared for you? Let's open up the gospel and find out!
God's richest blessing to you all this Thanksgiving!
My prayer for you this Thanksgiving is that you will discover the power of a thankful heart. In spite of your circumstances, God's will for us is that we live in the center of His sovereign grace and glory.
Just as Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises to God from the depths of a dark dungeon and experienced the power of God shaking the prison foundations and setting them free, may God bring us into that kind of freedom every day!
Unity! What a wonderful world it would be if we all could live in unity together. But the sad reality is, even the church desperately struggles with any semblance of unity.
The first thing we must acknowledge is that we are not called to create unity. Unity is something that Jesus Christ brought into our lives through the cross and His bloodshed on Calvary. He has reconciled us back into a relationship with the Father bringing peace and unity with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God has called us to preserve the unity that we have through Jesus Christ. We are to grow in our faith with one another until we all attain that unity of faith.
As the church worships and celebrates the unity we have in Christ, it reveals to the watching world that Jesus is who He says He is. The glory that He has given us manifests itself to a world living in corruption and starving for unity and wholeness!
The word "manifestation" means to make visible. Many things about our lives can be seen by the watching world we live in. When we are angry, happy, joyful, or grieving our body language can reveal so much about what we are feeling without saying a word.
But Scriptures tell us that we are to manifest the presence of Christ to a watching world. We are a new creation in Christ, the old things are passed away, and behold new things have come. We are to be continually transformed into the image of Christ from faith to faith. God is working out the fullness of His presence in our lives if we are truly followers of Him.
This manifestation of Christ is not accomplished by human effort but by human surrender to the Holy Spirit in us. He must increase and we must decrease. We are not to seek self-exaltation but die to ourselves that Christ may be exalted in us and through us.
We are not to seek our kingdom but the Kingdom of God in which Christ rules and reigns in our hearts and manifest Himself as a sweet aroma to God!
Jesus came to give life and to give it more abundantly. But this abundant life is not the American Dream or our personal success story.
Jesus said that He was the way the truth and the LIFE! Life and its abundance come from an abundant relationship with Jesus Christ!
We are unable to hold onto the world and its promises and along with our pursuit of the abundant life with Jesus Christ.
Let's open up the gospel and discover what this abundant life is all about and how we live out our lives from the middle of it.
What are you thinking? And, how does what you think determine how you live?
We have several thoughts every single day, many of which have little to no major determining factors for our lives. What color socks you wear or which earrings you put on will not change the world order in your life.
Scripture tells us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ! How we live out our faith in the world we live in does depend on how we think on the issues that matter. How the world defines value and how God does are becoming further and further apart.
If our minds are set on the flesh it will lead to death or separation. The mindset on the Spirit is life and peace. We can either be conformed to the world in how we think or we can be transformed by the renewing of our mind and become more like Christ!
What do you think about these 20 topics:
Life
Love
Hope
Faith
Gospel
God
Jesus
Holy Spirit
Success
Sin
Identity
Freedom
Work
Family
Marriage
Sex
Homosexuality
Fornication
Eternity
Hell
What you think about them and how you define them will determine how you live your life out and what will define your worldview. Write what you think about each one of them and then search the Scriptures to see how God has defined them, for His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways.
Perseverance! Endurance! Life was never meant to be a sprint. But a matter of getting up every day and moving forward toward the goal.
When it comes to being a follower of Jesus Christ, endurance is a must! Endurance implies there is an opposite force pushing back against us to quit.
When we have things in our lives that are valuable to us, we are willing to push past the conflict, obstacles, or people in our way.
This core value of perseverance is critical to our finishing our calling. Let's discover in the gospel our ability to live an enduring faith in a conflicting world.
We are saved by the power and glory of Jesus Christ through His death on the cross, the shedding of His blood for our redemption, and His resurrection giving us victory over sin and death!
But through the sanctifying work of His word by the power of His Holy Spirit, we are to destroy the strongholds of our flesh that we might take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ!
When we allow half-truths, speculations, and lofty things to be raised up against the knowledge of God, we are allowing those strongholds to be built higher and not torn down.
From the time we took our first breaths in this world, the family we were born into, the culture we were raised in, and even some of the religious groups we were a part of have given us half-truths and sometimes outright lies, that have become strongholds preventing us from walking in faith and knowing God's freedom!
Let's open up the gospel together and let the word of God through the Holy Spirit reveal to us those strongholds robbing us of the intimacy God has called us to!
Freedom! What does that mean to you? What does that freedom look like? What is freedom from? In a world of great diversity, there is a diversity of answers to those questions.
God has given us a free will in order that we may have a relationship with Him based upon the choice of mutual love. People, in general, have taken that free will and have convinced themselves that they can attain their own freedom by exercising that free will. What a fine web of corruption we have weaved!
With everyone exercising their freedom of choice, speech, and distorted view of who they are and how they want to live is it any wonder we find ourselves heading over the cliff of distorted freedom.
Jesus said that if we abide in Him we can know the truth and that truth will make us free! It was for freedom that Christ died and we are warned not to turn our freedom into an opportunity for our flesh. Our flesh will corrupt anything it touches. We are called to die to ourselves that we may live in the freedom that Christ died for.
Let's open up the gospel and discover the freedom that Christ died for!
This past year and a half have been a wilderness journey for many, if not all of us. The wilderness we are speaking of is not one of plush forest and green meadows but barren desert lands with limited or no water available for us. And in the midst of our journey, we have come across things that we have not asked for nor understand why they are even there.
This is exactly the same situation that the people of Israel found themselves in when God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and took them through the wilderness en route to the Promised Land.
Our wilderness journey like those in our illustration in Deuteronomy chapter 8 was being prepared for what God had already promised them and prepared for them. God was attempting to prepare their hearts to receive and live out fully what He had designed for them.
Whatever wilderness you are going through right now are discovering God's glory and presence within your circumstances? Don't look for the quickest exit for you will miss all that God desires for you to know and experience with Him.
No matter how talented or gifted we are, because of our human frailties, we all struggle with our inadequacies. We may not share them out loud but we experience the anxieties that come from those moments of personal conflict. We begin to push ourselves and attempt to regain those times when we felt adequate and in control. Feelings can be deceiving!
Being adequate in ourselves is a deception that creates most of our anxiety and fear in life.
We will discover today what the gospel has to say to us concerning where our adequacy comes from and the victory that we can know through Jesus Christ!
The foundation to most of our struggles in life is found in our efforts to maintain our identities. Who are we, and what factors determine our identity? How much influence does that world around us have on how we view ourselves.
I believe the greater question is not who are we, but who's are we. As followers of Jesus Christ, the world we live in should no longer be the determining factor concerning who we are.
God's word tells us that since the fall in the garden He has subjected us to futility in hopes that we would come to our senses and repent, coming to Him that we might discover the freedom and the glory that comes from being His children.
Throughout Scripture, we see the same temptation from the enemy attempting to deceive men to step outside of who they are and who's they are as followers of Jesus Christ!
Where do you stand in your identity? Who's are you? It will be seen by the corruption and futility or the life and peace you live out every day!
We have so much information available to us today, politically, socially, and religiously that it can be difficult to determine what is true and what isn't. There are so many conflicting teachings. How do we determine what teaching we should hold onto and which we need to run away from?
What does the gospel have to say concerning how we teach His word? What are the evidences of faithful teaching? We are to examine ourselves and our teaching for they can lead to a false understanding of Scripture and to an empty salvation.
Let the word of God and the Holy Spirit speak to us today!
We don't get it! We may think that we do, but I really don't believe or even think we understand the love that God has for us. It is so easy to fall back on our limited understanding of what love is and how it is normally expressed in our world today, that we have dishonored God in the process.
Because God is love, our expressions of love toward one another are evidence that we just don't get it. Jesus said that we are to love one another just as He has loved us. He has told us that because He died we all have died and that we no longer live for ourselves. Therefore the love of Christ should control us and we should no longer look at man according to the flesh.
We are told that those who truly love are born of God. Those that do not love are not born of God nor do they know God at all. We can only love one another out of the overflow of our love relationship with Jesus Christ. Because God so loved the world we are to so love the people in this world as He did.
God demonstrated His love toward us while we were yet sinners. It was the love of God that brought us to repentance.
How is your love demonstrating the glory of God to the world you live in?
Friendships are good, we all desire to have a few friends. If social media is any indication you would think that friends are the most important thing in the world. We boast about how many friends we have on FaceBook and other social media platforms as if it were the barometer of who we are and our status in life.
But we are told in Scripture that friendship with the world makes us an enemy of God. It's not that having friendships with others is something God looks down on but His concern comes in when our friendships in the world become the influence of how we live our lives.
Gal 6:14 But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. The Apostle Paul stated that he died daily. He died to the things in the world that drew him away from the life God had called him to.
He stated in another place that anything that was gain to him he considered it as rubbish that he might gain Christ. The world we live in is screaming for everyone's attention, offering empty promises that leave us empty and broken. The world is under the influence of Satan himself and his objective is to lead us away from the life God desires for us to have.
The enemy began in the Garden of Eden and has not stopped his deception and corruption for one moment. Making friendship with the world is making friends with the enemy.
Let's open up the gospel and discover how to live in the world but not of it.
For such a time as this! In a world full of turmoil, suffering, and pain, if there is any time that men who are after God's own heart need to come together it is now.
During this ongoing pandemic, our lives and how we live them have drastically changed! How we live out our faith has dramatically changed!
God has called us in Col. 1:28-29 to present every man complete in Christ! The enemy has done an effective job of distracting men from being what God has called us to. For us to become complete requires a commitment to one another, a willingness to get our hands dirty labor, some blood sweat, and tears, and a surrendered heart to God's workmanship.
This is your invitation to God's call to join us to become complete together for His glory.
You can go to http://everymancomplete.org/ and contact us at everymancomplete@gmail.com
Never be ashamed
Bro Jeff
Have you ever gone to a class reunion and had someone approach you to say hello and you didn't recognize them? You find out who they are and you said, "I hardly recognized you!" There had been such dramatic change that they didn't look like you remembered them.
When we come to Christ, there should be something significant that happens in our life that we may not look different on the outside, but how we live our lives outwardly should bring the question, "I hardly recognized you!" It's not that we are perfect, but the presence, love, grace, and power of Christ in us should make us notably different from those who know us.
God is transforming us into the image of His Son. He is not making us into a better version of us! We've been crucified with Christ and it is no longer we who live, but Christ!
who lives within us. Life should be different
Let's open up the gospel and discover the gospel difference!
We discover in Scriptures that God's love never fails and that nothing can separate us from the love of God. We also see that God's grace is sufficient and that where our sin abounded God's grace abounded all the more. But many times we seem to attach how we receive God's love and grace with how we receive God's blessings.
I believe what the last stanza of the Hymn "Showers of Blessings" says sums up what I have discovered the gospel has to say concerning blessings. "There shall be showers of blessing if we but trust and obey; There shall be seasons refreshing If we let God have His way."
God's blessings for our lives are contingent upon that two-letter word; "if". Blessings are dependent upon our obedience. Obedience is not doing good things that we want to do but what God has called us to do. Jesus said that He could only do what He saw the Father doing and we must follow the example of Jesus and do what we see the Father doing.
Let's open up the gospel and discover how we can know the blessings that God has prepared for us!
Where has the reverence gone? God is love! His grace is sufficient! His mercies are new every morning! He is patient and longsuffering! But He is Holy, Righteous, Sovereign, and worthy of all praise and glory!
Through our familiarity with God's word and the repetitive approach of our worship experiences, we have developed an irreverence for the God of our salvation. We honor Him with our lips but our hearts are far from Him!
The evidence of our irreverence is seen in our lack of love and respect for one another. It is seen in our political arena, our communities, our churches, and our own personal lives and families.
We can only live the life we are called to by God through the overflow of our relationship with Him. When our reverence for Him falters so does every other relationship we are involved in!
It's time for the people of God to repent! It's not about pointing the finger at those systems and people around us but looking to our own hearts of worship. Humbling ourselves in reverence and awe before the God of all creation.
We must worship in spirit and truth! What's the truth about your reverence?
Scripture tells us that there are those who have ears to hear but do not hear! Our faith is dependant upon that hearing. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. There is more to hearing than our eardrum picking up sound waves and our brains deciphering those sounds. There is a spiritual side to our hearing and then the evidence of our hearing that brings forth fruit.
Join us as we open up the gospel and discover how good our hearing is!
Nobody wants to be labeled a loser! But as we look into the gospel today we can discover how to avoid becoming the biggest loser!
In all four gospels, we see the verse, " if you find your life you will lose it, and if you lose your life for My sake and the gospel's sake you will find it." As seen, each of the gospels brings out this truth, each gospel has a different illustration to make this truth a personal reality to us.
The same theme is present in each illustration, the theme of dying to ourselves and to the worldly things that call for our devotion, and making Jesus Christ the surpassing value that we live for. We have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live! This is the life that we lose! The life that was dead in sin! The life that was separated from God!
Why would we attempt to save the life, that Jesus died on the cross to set us free from? The biggest loser is the one who continues to choose the life where Jesus Christ is not the fullness of that life! If we lose our life we will find the life that comes through the resurrection power of the gospel. Jesus Christ is that life!