Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!
Thanks for joining tonight's Bible discussion as we continue with the topic of living life under the New Covenant. Our main focus has been that many Christians are missing out on fully experiencing the benefit of our wonderful New Covenant because they're overly tied up on some level with Old Covenant LAW or with man made handed-down religious traditions or with the World's ideas for how Christianity ought to be functioning. Most of the problem has to do with how much of the Word we actually know and understand enough to apply in our daily living to the exclusion of competing ideas that come to us from those other sources: the Law, man made traditions and the World.
If you've been part of the discussion for a while then you know we've looked at this subject from at least 37 previous angles going back to last year. But if you're just joining us, I invite you to click on the upper left link to the Archives where you can find all the previous articles not only for this series but going back a number of years to other subjects we've previously had the blessing of learning about. You may not know that Prosperous Life Newsletter has been going out to our email list since January 1998 so the number of discussions over the years must be approaching the quadruple-digit level although the Archives no longer include the earlier years.
The Problem of Time
Today I'm thinking about Christians who're worried about something in their lives and my thesis is that in the fullness of New Covenant life, there's NO worry. Yet, most of us worry about particular things from time-to-time, and some of us worry about a lot of things most of the time. We worry about finances, life expectancy, health issues, family matters, loved ones, the economy, the future of the country, the weather and a lot of other things. Most of that worry is about things that haven't happened yet which is why we worry about them, concerned that when something eventually DOES happen it won't turn out the way we want it to. If we have a problem, we worry about how to solve it. Which approach will produce the best results? We worry about all these things even though Jesus told us in red letters on a number of occasions NOT to worry...about anything!
If you think about it, the underlying problem we have to deal with is TIME. We worry about things that haven't happened yet and until some amount of TIME passes, we won't know how all the things we're worrying about will turn out. TIME is something that came onto the earth when sin did. Before sin entered, everything was eternal. Certainly God is eternal. Adam and Eve were eternal beings until they disobeyed God. When that happened, sin entered the earth (Romans 5:12) and sin always brings death as the ultimate outcome of everything it touches. In other words, in order for DEATH to be a possible outcome of anything, both TIME and SIN will also be involved.
For WORRY to exist, TIME must be an ever-present context for life. Time and worry and sin and death are all interrelated which is why they exist INSIDE the World Systems. You won't find any of those things in the Kingdom of God where Jesus is. So when Jesus is telling us not to worry, He's saying to get ourselves inside the Kingdom which for the present we can only do by Faith trusting in God to make all the future things outside the Kingdom we have to deal with work out together for our good (Romans 8:28). The born-again Christian shall LIVE by Faith (Romans 1:17), Faith comes by hearing the Word (Romans 10:17), trusting in God for the future requires Faith. So the Word and Faith and life (1 Peter 1:23) and eternity are also all interrelated. If time is my problem then I combat and overcome it by focusing on the fact that by trusting Jesus I have eternal life. I'm an eternal being and my interface with TIME is the same as God's is: I give it NO consideration and NO power over my thinking because in the context of eternity it has no effect on me.
What are You Focusing On?
Last week we discussed the subject of fixing our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our Faith (Hebrews 12:2, see also Isaiah 26:3) and it connects easily to this week's discussion. What I saw more clearly during this past week as I thought more about these topics is that if you're fixing your eyes on Jesus, it's impossible to worry. That makes Jesus is a TODAY kind of guy. Our future has ALREADY been taken care of and if I keep in mind that the Father ALREADY knows what I need (Matthew 6:32) and if I'm strong in Faith because I'm in pursuit of Word understanding, what's to worry about? But as soon as I take my eyes off Jesus, I will by default start concerning myself with things in life beyond today. Don't get me wrong on this though: I know we have to aware of things in the future but we don't have to worry about them. I have a mortgage payment due on the first day of each month but I refuse to worry about the money I'm going to need to make that payment.
The World is all about concern for the future. If you go interview for a job some place, a typical question by the interviewer might be, "Where do you see yourself in five years? Or, what's your five-year plan and your ten-year horizon?" When I worked for a large corporation many years ago, they were always working on forward planning up to 20 years in the future. The World works on forward planning which is the antithesis of "today-planning" which doesn't get any farther out than TODAY. Today is where Jesus is and I want to be wherever He is. But I've come out of the World system the same as all of you have. It's ingrained in my way of thinking which has to be reprogrammed. My mind has to be RENEWED so that my thinking AGREES with the Word of God and no longer with the World (Romans 12:2). And in my case, the Holy Spirit has a difficult student on His hands because surely my Flesh is the most determined to worry that God ever made!
So, I'm not saying it's easy. But I AM saying that the perfect PEACE of Christ, the worry-free PEACE that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7) is available and approachable for believers who will PURSUE it (1 Peter 3:11, Psalm 34:14, Hebrews 12:14). Living life under the New Covenant is about focusing on TODAY as the means for overcoming worry and for fixing our eyes upon Jesus. Here's exactly what Jesus said about it in red letters:
Matthew 6:25, 34 = "...do not be worried about your life. (And) do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
The PEACE of God is TODAY-peace. It's about focusing on Jesus TODAY instead of on all your problems tomorrow. Most folks don't have problems today because they're all in the future. So friend, do your best today to look no farther than today and wait for tomorrow to become today. Don't look at tomorrow any more than is absolutely necessary because your enemy is doing everything he can to move your focus from TODAY to as far out in the future as he can get you. The peace you experience is about right now so find a way to enjoy it to the fullest! Your PEACE rarely comes as a result of tomorrow looking so great; it comes because TODAY hanging out with Jesus by faith inside the Kingdom is really a blast!
Thanks for joining our discussion tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on June 5. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), pushing you to VICTORY in every area of life!
Sinners' Prayer
If you've never invited Jesus to be your Lord, you can do so today by believing and saying out loud the following simple prayer:
Jesus, I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and I believe that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven for all time and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.
If you were sincere as you prayed, God has already come into your life and you're a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.
When you get a moment have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer and believing what you said:
Romans 10:9
2 Corinthians 5:17
Ephesians 2:8
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