Colossians 3:2-3
Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.
How we think makes a BIG difference in our lives. Two people can have the same experiences and tell a completely different story about it. Life is all about perspective - having an eternal perspective makes all the difference!
Do what feels good. It feels good the Pepsi way. That was the slogan of a generation, of my generation - do what feels good.
Something happened while we were all doing what felt good.
Between 1990 and 2000
AIDS went from infecting about 50,000 people to infecting 250,000 people, other STD's saw similar growth1
Students began going to school and shooting multiple victims, although violence in school has always existed, never before did students go to school to randomly choose multiple victims. 2
People chose to declare bankruptcy more often3 They chose to co-habitate and have multiple partners 4 and not surprisingly, we were depressed more often.5
What did we discover from all this? Living life to 'feel good' doesn't usually feel too good!! What we thought would bring our future glory, brought our present depression!
Proverbs 14:12 There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.
Living for the moment, led to a lot of really terrible moments.
This generation has a new slogan "YOLO" You only live once. Yet another lie that will lead to great sorrow.
2 Corinthians 5:17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!Galations 2:20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.When you become a new creation in Christ you DIE to the old self and you are BORN into new life, you become a new creation! So much for only living once!
Jesus used stories to explain things. Read this story in Luke 15:11-24
To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.
“A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.
“When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”’
“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’
“But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’
And so the party began.
Jesus tells us in John 10:10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.
Jesus wants to give us a FULL and satisfying life - too often we get it backwards, we think that God is a big meanie with rules to make our lives less fun, but the truth is the opposite. God isn't here to take away your fun times, in fact just the opposite - He want to place HIS banner over your life and give you a new purpose and a new hope for the future. He desired new LIFE for you.
Romans 6:1-14
Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.
Do not let sin control the way you live;do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.
God wants our focus to be eternal, that we should see the big picture - the forever picture.
Imagine you are at an art gallery and you see this:
Not very artistic, not very inspiring?
Back away from the painting - and you see this
God wants to change your perspective on life. He wants you to back up a bit and look at the whole picture.
1 John 2:15-17
Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.
God wants to give you a new slogan, a new name for your generation - YWLF - You will live forever!
1 http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5021a2.htm
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
3 http://www.policymattersohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bankruptcy_web1.pdf
4 http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/cohab-revised2.pdf
5 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14728109
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