day 29- intention for Kingdom living

With a clear vision of what kingdom life could be for us, what comes next? Intention. Here is where we start to get bogged down in our spiritual growth. Two things happen. One, we don’t really trust what we say we trust, and two; we don’t really intend to obey what we learn.

1. We must intend to trust Jesus
Here is where thinking it through is so important. There is a whole area of study that is critical to trusting in Jesus. It is called, “Apologetics.” This means, “making a case for,” or “making a defense.” In Christian apologetics, you make a case for your faith in Jesus. In my blog, as well as my website, I deal with apologetics and discipleship. The reason is simple.

You cannot sustain a living, influential faith in Jesus unless you trust in what he says and does. You cannot thrive as a disciple unless you have confidence that the Bible is the Word of God, Jesus is who he says he is, and the Christian worldview is the most reasonable and rational view of reality there is out of all religions and philosophies. Sunday School “Jesus loves me this I know” faith does not survive teenage and adult skepticism in a person who is truly testing out his/her faith. You can get by when times are good, but when crisis and uncertainty hit, which they will, to have confidence in the authenticity of your experience and the evidence of the truth of the Gospel are essential. The good news is Jesus is totally trustworthy.

2. We must intend to obey Jesus
Christians are not really honest on this point. So, often we talk a good faith but we don’t live it. Usually it happens this way. We focus almost entirely on a God of love and forgiveness. Yet, God is equally a God of justice and righteousness (right living). The God that totally loves you is the God that totally expects absolute obedience from you. We emphasize all the accounts in the Bible where Jesus is caring and forgiving but we skip over his call for our radical self-denial. For example, when he tells the woman who is caught in adultery to, “Go, and sin no more,” he wasn’t winking at her when he said it (John 8:1-11).

Yes, we can actually choose not to sin. We can choose to do what is right. It is possible to do this in this life. We can’t choose not to be a sinner and we will fail God, but we can make real progress. We are already a new creation when we place our trust in Jesus and begin to live in his Kingdom now. We do not have to give in to our old human desires for pleasure and power. The fact that we fail at times and fall back into our sinful human ways doesn’t cancel out the equally truthful fact that we can choose not to sin. Unless we go into this whole enterprise intending to live a transformed life we will fail before we get started.

We can live our lives as Jesus would if he were us. He created the means.

What are some ways you are trying to talk yourself out of really believing you don’t actually have to choose to sin in situations of life?