Are You Committed?

“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the

one and love the other, or he will be devoted

to the one and despise the other.”

-Matthew 6:24

                In our relationship with God we need to be 100% committed to Him. We cannot say that we live for Him if we only go to him when we need something and then continually sin or forget about God when we are financially stable or feel that things are going good for us. We can’t maintain a strong relationship with the Lord if we don’t do his will for us. He won’t let his grace rain down on us if we turn our backs.We will be punished when the time for His judgment comes. We cannot wait and delay our confession of Christ until we are on our death bed so we can live rebelliously either because we do not know when we are going to die. We could die instantly in a car accident and never receive the opportunity again to be saved.

               

“But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless

and in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.”

-Hebrews 6:8

                We need to be careful not to backslide into our old ways. God is a jealous god and will not let His kingdom be a divided one.  If we confess Jesus as our savior but then don’t live according to His law and His will then we are not useful to Him and we bear bad fruit. We bear bad fruit because we are not being righteous. When we bear bad fruit we are not drawing people to Christ; we are turning them away or not even letting them see who Jesus is. What is fruit in biblical terms? It is the manifestation of God’s works. And the only way to bear good fruit is through Him. You can say that you are a follower of Christ but that won’t save you; how do you live your life? Are you just a wolf in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15)?

“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain

 in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”

-John 15:4

                How do we remain in Him? Through Christ’s words. We must take up our own cross so that our sinful life can be cut off and we can be made alive in the Spirit. In Luke, when it says that we are to lose our life to save it, it means that we are to give up our own free will to perform God’s will so that we may bring others to Him and have Jesus as our savior. Therefore, we do save our life but it’s not our earthly life we save. Instead, we are saving our everlasting life so we aren’t cast into the lake of fire. The things on this earth are not as important as the promise of new life that we will have in Heaven after the Son of Man returns to harvest his people during the Rapture.

“Then he said to them all, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his

 cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses

his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole

world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?”

-Luke 9:23-25

“And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

-Luke 14:27