Many of us have been taught that we need to live for Christ. To live each day for Jesus! We have been told to do our best for Him.

So to do that, we’ve tried desperately to live for Him, to do everything we can to please Him, to work hard for Him. We strive to keep all of the laws of Christian living.

Then after trying and failing, we might give up for a while, maybe not consciously, but we just sort of glide along, feeling lukewarm about our fellowship with God. Then one day, we hear a message telling us we need to re-dedicate our lives and renew the fire to return to our first love!

So we dutifully trod on down to the front of the church, re-dedicating our life again, and promised the Lord that we would try to do better. We will be more consistent at prayer, Bible reading, witnessing, or whatever comes to our guilt-ridden, condemned mind at that moment.

“Yes, Lord, I will try to do better.” “I re-dedicate myself to work harder, to be more on fire for you, to live for you each day.”

Then a little time passes, and the next thing we know, we are burnt out from trying to live FOR Jesus. So back we go again, stirring up “revival fire in our soul,” striving once again to live as a better Christian, living daily FOR the Lord.

I am I reading your mail? Have you found yourself on this bondage treadmill?

Then what you need to do is take a look at the preposition “FOR.”

You’ve been trying to do things FOR the Lord. Trying to live FOR Christ. That is a hopeless way of living, and it is nowhere to be found in the New Covenant. You can do a word search as I have done (using the KJV), and you will never find any New Covenant writers admonishing us to live FOR Christ. And yet in our own strength, which is, in fact, self-righteousness, we have tried desperately to do it.

What is the difference, you may ask? The difference is that you are doing the works by living FOR Him. Dead works! Thinking that Christ is in you, but you are still doing everything. Asking Him to help YOU do it.
Christ is indeed in us, but we need to understand more fully that we are also “IN Christ.”

He is living His life through us. We are dead. He is now our life.

This life that you are now living isn’t your life. It’s Christ living in and through you. You died – remember?

Paul put it this way:

God the Father sees you as IN Christ. He doesn’t see a struggling, stumbling heavenward failure trying to live like Christ. He sees you complete in Christ Jesus.

Since we are “in Christ” and have died, there is no need for us to re-dedicate ourselves.

This life you are now living is

Jesus living through you, and He doesn’t need to re-dedicate Himself. He doesn’t need to rekindle the fire.

Let’s take a look at how Jesus explained this to us.

If we understand the words praise and worship, why is so little of it done in many churches? To praise someone is to give credit to them for who they are and what they have done and are still doing.  To worship is to give honor, adoration, and love to the one being worshipped. So often, the songs presented to us to sing in church are neither about praise nor worship. Much of the time, the songs are “I” songs, “I am this,” “I am not that,” or “I want or need this or that.” Why, too, are we expected to spend time asking Him to “renew us”, or to “revive us again?” We are dead to self but alive unto God. Romans 6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Do we want God to “revive” that old dead person we were? NOT! Then why ask Him to revive us? I hear other songs where the words go on about us being “broken and empty,” or “dry and thirsty,” or “set me free.” That’s not what the Word says about us. It says:

Colossians 2:10 “And ye are complete in him” So much of what is being promoted as a Praise and Worship time has become a list of what we think we are not and crying for what we think we don’t have. It’s become all about us and not about Him.  A song came out a while ago where the composer, Matt Redman, said: I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about you, all about you, Jesus. I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it when it’s all about you; it’s all about you. Unfortunately, much praise and worship time has become about us, not Him. Sure it’s good to sing songs about our freedom and our victory “in Christ Jesus”. But praise and worship need to be directed toward Jesus the Son and God the Father. Take time to look at the lyrics we are given to sing. If they are just a list of wants for things we already have “in Christ Jesus”, then let’s not sing them.

IT’S NOT ABOUT US.

John 15:4-5 (MSG) 4“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. 5” I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me, and I with you, the relationship is intimate and organic, and the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing.

The vine is Christ; we are the branches. Can a branch produce fruit without the vine? John 15:4 says no. Does a branch produce fruit at all? No, it only BEARS fruit. Christ PRODUCES the fruit.

We are not called on to do OUR best, we are simply called on to submit to the vine, which is Jesus, and He has already done the best.

The branch is set free from the work of producing the fruit – that’s the job of the tree. No more struggling to produce the “fruit of the Spirit.” We just bear that fruitful life.

Stop trying to live the Christian life, or live FOR Christ, and let Christ do it through you!

No more trying to live FOR Christ. You can’t do it! Allow yourself to live IN Christ and allow Him to live through you. That’s simple submission to the life of Christ in us and us in Him.

That’s the life of one who lives SET FREE!

PRAYER.

For years we in this country, and others such as the U.S., have had a National Day of Prayer. I’m sure there will be more of them to come as well.

I’ve always avoided them.

At first, I felt a bit guilty about that, especially as a pastor it seemed my duty to lead our church in this special event.

So I stopped and looked at the event’s premise and the main verse it was centered around.

We, who are “called by His

Today, the name” the name of Jesus, is for Christians, not Israelites. Solomon made this statement at the dedication of the Temple. Israel had fallen into disobedience once again, and this was a call for national repentance.

God dealt with nations in the Old Covenant, but today He deals with us as individuals. It’s not correct to ask God to forgive us as a nation. We are individuals who have accepted His forgiveness. The New Covenant says, “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”.

It’s about individuals, not nations.

Under the New Covenant, our acceptance is not earned through our works; God’s love and acceptance is lavished upon us, by grace. Jesus has become “a surety of a better covenant”, bringing in “a better hope, through which we draw near to God.”

I often hear, “If we can get enough people to pray for our country, maybe God will “heal our land and forgive our country for its sins.” That’s not going to happen. God has saved us individually based on faith in Him. The country didn’t sin, only the individuals who lived in it. From God’s point of view, He sees us all forgiven. Remember what John the Baptist said about Jesus? “Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the world’s sin.” That’s what Jesus did. He took away the sin of the world. He provided forgiveness for everyone. So God is not withholding His blessings from any nation because of sin. Sin was dealt with at Calvary. If we want a Christian country, we won’t get it by complaining about what the lost want passed as laws in our land (i.e. gay marriage). We will never be successful by trying to impose holiness standards on unbelievers. Even God won’t do that! Many unholy things were going on in Rome at the time of Paul and Jesus, but they never instructed us to bombard the government with protests or to march around the city, claiming it for Jesus.  We can’t legislate sin out of our country. Non-believers are the majority and will live how they want to live. Our righteous indignation will not change that. The imposition of prohibition in the 1920s should have shown us that that does not work. Getting enough people to pray about something is called “shots on goal praying.” “Maybe if enough people pray, we will get through to God.” We don’t have to “get

It sounds like a great formula for Canada to heed– but this verse was not written to Canadians.

It is an Old Covenant admonition to the Nation of Israel. It does not apply to us because the Old Covenant has been “made obsolete.”
God has accepted the offering of his son. Therefore, he sees us “in Christ.” We are not wicked people who need to turn from our wicked ways; the Bible calls us “holy ones” and “saints”. At the cross, all of our sins (past, present, and future) have been paid for and forgiven. You have been redeemed!

We need not pray this verse from 2 Chronicles.

We simply trust in God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ.