Follow and Serve Jesus Christ

“And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.’” (John 12:23-26 ESV)

Our faith in Jesus Christ is more than just being forgiven our sins so that we can go to heaven when we die, and not hell. If our faith is God-persuaded faith, we enter into a marriage covenant with Jesus Christ. He becomes our husband and we (male and female) become his bride. And now there is an intimacy of relationship on a spiritual level between us and our God – Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit. 

But for this relationship between us and our God to occur, we must first, by faith in Jesus Christ, be crucified and buried with Christ in death to sin so that we can be raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer as slaves to sin but now as slaves to God and to his righteousness. Thus we are to let sin no longer reign in our mortal bodies to obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it leads to death, not to life eternal (Romans 6:1-23).

But now our relationship with Jesus Christ has begun, much like the beginning of any marriage relationship, only on a spiritual level, not on a physical level. And now we, as his bride, desire him, and we want to spend time with him, and we want to know his thoughts and his likes and dislikes, for we want to do what pleases him, because we love him. And so we are in his word daily, listening to him speak, so we can do what he says.

And when he shows us his plan for our lives, we want to obey him, and so we follow him in obedience, and we spend time in his word, and we learn at his feet all that he wants to teach us, for we are his bride, and he is our husband. And we develop a close walk with him to where we get to know him better day by day, and to where we hear him better, too, and so we respond to his voice and we go where he sends us to do what he wants.

And then we are blessed as God uses us in the lives of others to minister his love and grace to them with the love that he has for us. And we are blessed by likeminded Christians who encourage us, too, as we grow together in our walks of faith and in obedience to our Lord. And we are so thankful that our Lord loved us so much that he died on that cross to deliver us out of our lives of sin so that we can now serve him faithfully with our lives.

Yet, those who love themselves, and not God, will continue on in their deliberate and habitual and often premeditated sinning against the Lord, and against other humans, for their desire is for themselves, and not for God. But this will not end well for them, for even if they make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, if they refuse to die with him to sin and now live to his righteousness in walks of obedience to him, they will lose their lives.

But for us who choose, by God-given faith in Jesus Christ, to die with Christ to sin and to live to him and to his righteousness in walks of obedience to his commands, in his power, we have the promise and the hope of eternal life with God, both now and forevermore. For to be Christ’s means to serve him with our lives, and it means to follow him in obedience, in his power. And it involves us being in relationship with him, not going it on our own.

[Matt 7:21-23; Matt 24:9-14; Lu 9:23-26; Rom 1:18-32; Rom 2:6-8; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14,24; Rom 12:1-2; Rom 13:11; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; 1 Co 1:18; 1 Co 15:1-2; 2 Tim 1:8-9; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 1:5; Gal 5:16-21; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 2:8-10; Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:3-6; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:5-17; 1 Pet 2:24; Tit 2:11-14; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6,24-25; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Heb 3:6,14-15; Heb 10:23-31; Heb 12:1-2; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15] 

"My God and I"

Music & Lyrics: Austris A. Wihtol, 1932

My God and I go in the fields together,

We walk and talk as good friends should and do;

We clasp our hands, our voices ring with laughter,

My God and I walk through the meadow's hue.

He tells me of the years that went before me,

When heavenly plans were made for me to be;

When all was but a dream of dim conception,

To come to life, earth's verdant glory see.

My God and I will go for aye together,

We'll walk and talk as good friends should and do;

This earth will pass, and with it common trifles,

But God and I will go unendingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDc8MOtMrh0

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