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Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve...
but as for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord.
JOSHUA 24:15
I have been needing this Rest Stop because of the many choices I've had to make this year in moving to full-time discipleship ministry as a vocation. I hope this Rest Stop encourages us to realize afresh the true choice we always have available to us!
RIGHT VERSUS WRONG
I grew up thinking the choices I had were between doing right or wrong. And I got pretty good at doing right. God lovingly led me to see that my best efforts to do right according to my own standards and the standards of other people always result in a lifeless self-righteousness.
We are not sufficient of ourselves...our sufficiency is from God,
who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant,
for (doing right according to) the letter of the law kills,
but the Spirit (of Christ) gives life.
(2 Corinthians 3:5-6)
God has showed me that my righteousness, or my "right-ness," before Him doesn't come from what I do, but from what Christ has done for and in me! I am righteous because God has made me right in Christ! This is a gift I have received, not an accomplishment I could ever achieve.
Those who receive the gift of righteousness
will reign in life through Jesus Christ.
By one Man's (Christ's) obedience,
many will be made righteous.
This Rest Stop's verse from the book of Joshua shows that our true choices are not what we choose to do, but who we choose to serve.
Before we knew Christ, we could only serve ourselves. There were no choices. We could try to choose between doing right or wrong, but, as already noted, these were not true choices.
Adam and Eve lived in fellowship with God receiving all they needed from
God. They believed the truth of the faithfulness of God...until...until they chose to believe the lie that says they can do something
right apart from God. Adam and Eve were not trying to do
wrong, they were trying to right -- and that was sin.
However, now that we are in Christ, we have been freed to choose to serve Christ in us as the source of all that we need! We do this by
believing and breathing (praying) the truths from God's Word about choices we've been enabled by Holy Spirit:
If then you were raised with Christ,
seek those things which are above where Christ is.
(Colossians 3:1)
Put on the whole armor of God,
that you may be able to stand against the wile of the devil.
(Ephesians 6:11)
Stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free,
and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.
(Galatians 5:1)
Be thankful to God who always leads you in triumph in Christ,
and diffuses the fragrance of Christ through you everywhere.
(2 Corinthians 2:14-15)
And so much more!
CLOSING
God has already made us right in His dear Son Jesus Christ. It is finished. We no longer have to strive to be right by doing right things. We can now do right things because we are right! Being free of needing to become right, we are free to live for others and to love others through the life and love of Christ in us!
God doesn't want you to do the most right thing, He wants you to do the most loving thing! This phrase from one of my mentors sounds so radical only because the gospel of Jesus Christ is indeed radical!
With love for your journey,
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