After hearing a sermon, there are some key points or feelings you usually take from it, but it is often difficult to remember the details. Since my sermon was about the Christian walk, I wanted provide some of the details from the sermon in writing, so they can be remembered and referred back to; Because if we miss the purpose of the Christian walk…we will miss Jesus.
Below are the 3 main points (from Col. 2) I communicated followed by the quote by Tullian Tchividjian (Presbyterian Pastor and great grandson of Billy Graham). His quote sums up beautifully what the Christian walk is about and how we are to grow in it.
1. You are completely full in Christ. Everything you need, in Christ, you already possess. So don’t seek fullness anywhere else, you have it.
2. You have triumph because of Christ’s triumph. It isn’t about what you do but what Christ has already done for you.
3. You live the life you are called to live because of your love for Christ, not to gain the love of Christ.
“I’m realizing that the sin I need removed daily is precisely my narcissistic understanding of spiritual progress. I think too much about how I’m doing, if I’m growing, whether I’m doing it right or not. I spend too much time pondering my failure, brooding over my spiritual successes, and wondering why, when it’s all said and done, I don’t seem to be getting that much better. In short, I spend way too much time thinking about me and what I need to do and far too little time thinking about Jesus and what he’s already done. And what I’ve discovered, ironically, is that the more I focus on my need to get better the worse I actually get. I become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with my performance over Christ’s performance for me makes me increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective. After all, Peter only began to sink when he took his eyes off Jesus and focused on “how he was doing”
So, by all means work! But the hard work is not what you think it is–your personal improvement and moral progress. The hard work is washing your hands of you and resting in Christ’s finished work for you–which will inevitably produce personal improvement and moral progress. Progress in obedience happens when our hearts realize that God’s love for us does not depend on our progress in obedience. Martin Luther’s got a point: “It is not imitation that makes sons; it is sonship that makes imitators.”
The real question, then, is: What are you going to do now that you don’t have to do anything? What will your life look like lived under the banner which reads “It is finished?”
What you’ll discover is that once the gospel frees you from having to do anything for Jesus, you’ll want to do everything for Jesus so that “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do” you’ll do it all to the glory of God…That’s real progress”
*from June 2011 Newsletter Article