Two Questions

Two questions that have challenged my heart recently are these:

• Do I try to please God by what I do for Him?
• Do I try to live my own life by my own power?

These were questions my pastor asked during the Easter Sunday service, but they are things that God has already started working on in my life.

I can get really preoccupied with shallow, surface things. How do I look, what food am I eating, what do people think of me? I can get so caught up in appearing to live the perfect Christian life – and I am trying to do it in my own fleshly strength. I guess that’s where those two questions begin to fit together.

During this year as a School of Discipleship student,  God has been teaching me about what it means to live for Him. It’s about who I am. Living for Jesus starts first of all with knowing Jesus more fully. When that is the cornerstone my life is built upon, then living for Jesus will come naturally. The fruit of my life will show that I’m rooted and built upon Christ.

Trying to “do things for God” with my own effort will get me nowhere, like a car stuck in a rut spinning its wheels. If I just strive in my fleshly strength to live for God, I’ll never achieve it.

Being a Christian, a follower of Christ, starts with knowing and loving Jesus fully and intimately. Living for Him (and working, serving, discipling, and loving) needs to come out of that first love, and it can be done – through the power of the Holy Spirit.

These are the questions I need to ask myself now:

• Am I seeking to know Jesus intimately?
• Do I desire for Jesus to work in and through me, or am I still grasping for “control”?
• Is my focus on myself, or on Jesus?

As I learn more about Jesus, one thing is standing out to me especially. Taking on the nature of Jesus in my own life is impossible when I try to accomplish it in my own strength. It is possible through the power of the Holy Spirit! His work in my life and heart make this goal achievable – this goal of knowing Jesus more, being like Him, and living for Him.

“…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 1:6

When I started following Christ, God began to work in my life, transforming me more into the image of Christ. And God’s promise to me is that He is still at work in me, and He won’t stop working until He’s finished.

And it’s pretty cool to have one year set aside to get to know Jesus more, and to do it with awesome people like my School of Discipleship classmates.