Selfless Faith

In Matthew 10:38, Jesus completes His statement from verse 37 to the disciples with this: “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”

Often times, we accept Christ as our Savior but not as our Lord. However, He will not be one without the other. If He is our Lord,then He MUST be our Savior; if He is our Savior, then He MUST be our Lord. Yet, a lot of times, we say we are saved but we run completely away from Him. My beloved, if we are truly saved, we must follow Him. We must walk with Him, and He will walk with us, and within us. The apostle Paul says if we confess with our mouths that “Jesus is Lord” and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, then we will be saved. If we believe it in our hearts, we have no choice to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not possible to lose our salvation, but we must examine ourselves and make sure we have it already. As Jesus said “Not everyone who says Lord, Lord shall enter.” My beloved, know Jesus, follow Jesus, be guided by Jesus with your hearts and not only your mouths. As God said, “I will be their God, and they will be My people.” Let us pick up our cross and follow after the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 10:37, Jesus says to His disciples “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”

Simply stated, Jesus comes first. If we put anything before the Lord Jesus Christ, then we are not worthy of Him. He died for our sins on the brutal cross of Calvary, and rose again to give us life, not putting His own life first, but putting our lives first. He was rich, but became poor, so that we could become rich in His name; He gave up everything, so that we could gain everything. However, we can so easily put our jobs, personal lives, husband or wife, even our children or parents first before the Lord. Nothing comes first. Even at times, we may fall into the trap of serving God before God. My beloved, be careful. As John wrote in his epistle “Little children, keep away from idols.” Let trust in the Lord with all your mind, body, soul and spirit, and He will guide us exactly where He wants us, and that is exactly where we need to be.

In Matthew 10:35-36, Jesus says to His disciples, “For I have come to ’set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’“

Jesus knows the heart of men and their unwillingness to trust Him and walk in His light. Therefore, He tells His disciples what is to come. Without Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we love our sins more than anything else, and those who sin with us. However, when we turn from our sins, we also turn from those who sin with us, and they turn against us. Why must this be? The enemy of God is sin. God hates sin, and sin hates God. This is the spiritual warfare that we go through. As we have seen, betrayal comes from within and we must continue to seek the Lord and trust in Him that we may handle any circumstances we may face with His guidance.

In Matthew 10: 34, Jesus says to His disciples “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”

Let us not fool or confuse ourselves on the purpose of the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. There can never be peace on earth until all the sins, iniquities, and transgressions that are in this world is wiped away completely. That is why our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, came to bring a sword, Himself, the Word of God, to defeat the evil and wickedness of the world, and conquer the enemy once and for all. Until all evil and wickedness is cast into the fiery pit of eternal damnation, there will not be peace on earth, because Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the Prince of Peace. Without the Prince of Peace living in each and everyone one of us, there cannot be peace anywhere. When we think we are at peace, the enemy is always orchestrating a plan to devour us. Be watchful and stand guard.

Let’s examine a basketball game in the fourth quarter with 10 seconds to go; the home team‘s down by two and the clock winds down to one second, the star player shoots the three point shot, the commentator says he is going for it all and the shot…

My beloved, when we are in Christ, we must be in Him to the fullest so that His glory shines throughout the world of darkness. We cannot have one foot in this world and the other foot in Christ. Either we give our life entirely to Christ or we keep our pagan ways. So many times, we as Christians partake in the worldly dealing because we find it fun and interesting. We miss our old nature and we try to lie to God, but we are only lying to ourselves because God knows our hearts. Sin is degrading and disgusting and we should not find pleasure in it. Oh yes, our flesh surely finds pleasure in it, but our flesh will surely die at the Father’s calling. Let’s not let our spirit die with our flesh. Continue reading