Now What Am I Going to Do About It?
This past Sunday the men of the church led worship. Jim Miller gave us a great message. At the end of the service, we took communion.
Communion is a part of Christian worship. It was instituted by Jesus on the evening before His death. It is the partaking of bread and wine, which was presented before God the Father in thankful memorial of Christ’s sacrifice. This became (through the sacramental blessing) the communion of the body and blood of Christ.
Like all religious ceremonies, communion can become routine. Just another habitual thing we do.
As we were preparing to take the sacraments Jim said something that caught my attention. He said, “We caused Jesus’ death.” Our sins are the reason Christ died on that cross. And it hit me…
I killed Jesus.
It’s not just that Jesus died to pay for our sins. I killed Him.
At that moment His sacrifice hit me. I directly caused His death. I’m responsible for this.
Now what am I going to do about it?
The Scripture Jim used was 2 Peter 1:1-11. This is an outline for a Christian life.
The Lord has given us everything we need for life and godliness. That you may share the divine nature and escape from the world’s immorality that sinful craving produces.
- This is why you must make every effort to add moral excellence to your faith
- And to moral excellence, knowledge
- And to knowledge, self-control
- And to self-control, endurance
- And to endurance, godliness
- And to godliness, affection for others
- And to affection for others, love.
If all these are yours and they are growing in you, they’ll keep you from becoming inactive and unfruitful. Whoever lacks these things is shortsighted and blind, forgetting that they were cleansed from their past sins.
Do this and you will never ever be lost. You will receive a rich welcome into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
How do we apply this outline to our daily lives?
Jim being a rancher, gave us a cowboy analogy for this.
In different seasons cattle need to be given supplements to keep them healthy and living their best life.
He used a story about supplements from a cattleman’s magazine. This story used staves in a wooden barrel as an example. These are narrow vertical boards that are used on the sides of wooden barrels.
If one of these staves is shorter than the others, the barrel can’t be filled. It will only hold as much as the shortest stave.
The point of this magazine article was…cattle will only be as healthy as the shortest thing in their diet. This is where supplements come in.
Taking supplements is not something that is done once. It needs to be done on a regular basis over a period of time.
This is the same in our spiritual lives. We need to take supplements to live the best life. These supplements are regular reading of the Bible and prayer.
Reading and applying scripture and praying daily, living the life that God has called me to, these are a way to repay a small portion of my debt for killing Jesus.