Monday, March 8, 2010

To Those of Us Who Need to Become Active Redeemers

Life changing events are some of the most dangerous things one could encounter. These decisions may not necessarily be extraordinarily different from other garden variety experiences, but they carry much more weight to them. These decisions will carry with you for the rest of your life, and you will have to try very hard to change back to the opposite of what you've chosen [if what you've chosen is the wrong choice].

It would be wrong of me to say "These choices define the way your life will play out," because...it's not true. If I said that, then I would be stealing power away from a sovereign God, and that's just wrong. We can't let Life Changing Events define who we are or what we will be, but neither can we act like they never happened, because that would ruin opportunities for us to change and grow and persevere.
Rom 5:3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
Rom 5:4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
So what is this hope we have? If we endure these trials for Jesus' sake, then will we have any hope left?

The hope we have is in Jesus and only in Him. Jesus redeemed us all with His blood. He lived a life we cannot live. He died a death we should have died. He paid a price we deserved to pay.That price was death.

The Bible teaches that the life is in the blood. We know that to be pretty much Truth today. Without blood, there is no oxygen transfer without that we would stop functioning [die]. So there's no reason not to believe that teaching. When Jesus shed His blood, He shed His life. There is only one reason in the entire universe [which is His by the way] is because He loves us and does NOT want us to spend eternity separated from Him.

re·deem

tr.v. re·deemed, re·deem·ing, re·deems
  1. To recover ownership of by paying a specified sum.

The specified sum, is a perfect sacrifice. All of Scripture points to Jesus as the only perfect sacrifice that would meet God's standard of perfection. Jesus redeemed us with His sacrifice.

I submit that the least we can do for Jesus is to allow Him to redeem things through us as we live our lives daily.
Music.
Friends.
Video Games.
Family.
School.
Work.
All can be redeemed by Jesus through us, His servants.
Lets get our there and use our own Life Changing Experiences to better other people, rather than ourselves; to be outward redeemers, rather than selfish fools.