Band of Brothers and Sisters in Christ – Part 1

Michael writes this week that a life lived apart from God is a life of quiet desperation. Many spend their lives just trying to keep their noses above water, to keep from sinking under the quagmire of the world. The burden of the things of the world and the affairs of life will keep us suffocating in sin and iniquity. Without other godly men and women, we are sinking in life's alarms. You are most like those with whom you associate. Who is your band of brothers and sisters? With whom would you rather spend the moments of your precious life? Many people die on the vine because of discouragement and disappointment. Where is your heart? Courage means to take heart; to keep my heart aligned with the heart of my big brother Jesus Christ, I must surround myself with my band of brothers and sisters in Christ.

When Jesus was nailed to the cross, He could have called twelve legions of angels to rescue Him from a shameful and humiliating death. However, it was not the nails that kept Him hanging on the cross. Rather, it was for the joy that was set before Him that He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God.  The joy before him was my life and your life. We are alive because of the love He had for those would follow Him. For the great love wherewith He loved us, even while we were yet sinners, He shed His innocent blood as the supreme sacrifice in full payment for our sin and iniquity against God.

Sometimes God calls us to push the stones in our life. However, He doesn't always call us to move them. In the midst of the unmovable stones of life, God's blessing is often in the pushing and not in the moving. The goal is not to allow God to move the circumstances, but to allow Him to move my heart...  not in my strength, but in His strength alone. In Isaiah 55:8, God said that my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts. Often, what we think of as failures, God sees as successes. Our success is when we allow God to work in our lives to will and to do of His good pleasure. We must learn to define our success in terms of His success. We must align our hearts with His heart in order to become disciplined followers of Jesus Christ. Wisdom, patience and endurance is the result of enduring trial and tribulation as a good foot soldier of our commander in chief, the Lord. In the midst of the spiritual battle, God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him – Isaiah 26:3.

As Americans, we pride ourselves on the inalienable right of the pursuit of happiness.  What is the key to happiness? Most Americans have no idea. Most have subscribed to the secular doctrines of this world that defines happiness as a fleeting feeling. The job of the devil is to rain on our parade. One negative barb of a comment can burst your balloon of happiness. We stumble in many was. The devil always shows up in the midst of grumbling and stumbling. According to the book of James, the tongue is a fire and a world of evil, corrupting the body and is set on fire by hell itself. The tongue is an evil unto itself full of deadly poison. Therefore guard thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. If garbage is in your heart, it will come out of your mouth (garbage in / garbage out).  We must also keep our eye gate pure before God.  The key to happiness is casting down imaginations and every high thing that exaulteth itself against the truth of the knowledge of the word of God, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ – 2 Corinthians 10:5.

We'll finish Michael's message tomorrow.

In Christ, Brian