WORKING NON-STOP Have you ever started something you couldn’t finish? I have and probably so have you. But God has never started something He couldn’t finish. He began a good work in you and He will persevere until the day of Jesus: That means either the day you die and meet Jesus or the day Jesus returns. Either way, He won’t stop working on you. John 10:22-29.
We used to live in a world that was totally literal. You had literal friends and literal experiences. But today we live in a virtual world. You can have virtual friends and you can have virtual experiences. Some people today are looking for a virtual church experience but the writer of Hebrews stresses that we need to have a literal experience of gathering with other believers.
Loving your neighbor as you love yourself simply means you see yourself as God sees you. You are fearfully and wonderfully made, but we are all made with flaws. But God loves us in spite of our imperfections. You and I are trophies of His grace. When you see yourself as a sinner saved by grace, but deeply loved by God, you are free to love others.
How do you get on base in the Christian life? You can’t, but there’s Someone who can get you on base. Righteousness, like baseball, sets an impossible standard. Who could ever bat 1.000? The very best players are only going to get on base about 1/3 of the time. We all strike out and make plenty of errors. There’s only one man who ever batted 1.000 at life, and that’s the God man, Jesus Christ. When it comes to righteousness, why don’t you ask Jesus to be your pinch-hitter? He never strikes out. He never makes an error. He can get you on base, and then He will Coach you to make it safely home.
It’s hard to live up to the promise “satisfaction guaranteed” because there are plenty of people whose theme song is the old Rolling Stones ballad, “I can’t get no satisfaction!” Some people will never be satisfied! The Bible teaches true satisfaction comes from having a relationship with God. And God guarantees we can have that. The term “salvation” covers more than just your original commitment to Christ. The Bible teaches we have been saved—that’s justification; we’re being saved—that’s sanctification; and we WILL be saved—that’s glorification. And God guarantees our salvation.
The future of America is at stake in every Presidential election, but the future of the universe doesn’t depend on who is sitting in the White House in Washington. It all depends on Who is sitting on the Great White throne in heaven. The election spoken of in the Bible is the act whereby God elects men and women to be His children. It is a Divine Election for salvation. And it is possible to be absolutely sure about this election.
We’re all so different. We come from different backgrounds, different convictions. But when we all love each other and open arms to all kinds of people, that’s when the beauty of unity is seen. And God wants that here. And we can never stand and say to anybody, “You cannot come to the body of Christ.” Because that’s what Jesus would do. He opens His arms.
Smyrna was the center of emperor worship for the Roman Empire. If Romans had believed in Jesus, they would have put him up on a shelf in the Pantheon with all of their other gods: Jupiter, Zeus, Mercury, Mars, etc. But when Christians refused to name any other God than the one God of heaven they were called atheists and many of them were put to death. That’s the kind of setting in which they lived and that’s why Jesus said, “I know what you are going through.”
