The Pride of Ownership

[Herald]

Following is a snipet of a sermon I am working on that will carry the title of this thread. I will be delivering this message on Sunday February 18th. As I reflect on the struggles I have had in my Christian walk, I realize that I was all too often waiting for that figurative light bulb to go off in my head. "Aha! So that's the key!" Then would usher in a new period in my life when I live in obedience to God and His word without repeatedly crashing and burning. It has dawned on me that the key has not been hidden from me. It is really quite simple. The problem is one of ownership. The answer is not theological Calvinism, but practical Calvinism (or better yet, Calvinism lived).

Please pray that my exegesis will be sound and my development of this concept will be clear and conscise. Also pray that it will be used by God to call His saints to action within our local fellowship. I will be posting a link to the finished manuscript (on my blog) after it is completed.

Soli Deo Gloria!

The Pride of Ownership

NAS Romans 12:1 I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Someone once said, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep getting up and leaving the altar.” The thought being that it is one thing to offer your life as a living sacrifice to God. It is another thing to actually do it. In fact, many Christians have a difficult time surrendering their lives into God’s service. Consider some of the areas in which Christian’s struggle: financial giving, time, prayer, reading the word, language, earthly pleasures, old behaviors etc. Some of these are positive actions and others negative, but whether we are doing something in the service of God or not doing something in the service of God, many Christian’s have repeated difficulties in doing the right thing consistently. A myriad of “how to” books have been written for a Christian audience who can’t rush to the book store quick enough to buy them. In search of a “purpose driven life” the masses have embraced the Christian pop culture as their solution. But like all those well meaning New Years resolutions that have begun by sheer will power, the person often find themselves back were they started from. The excuses why? They’re only limited to the imagination. And there we are, left frustrated and feeling like salmon swimming upstream. That is until a new book or pop philosophy emerges on the scene.

Why is it that Christian’s struggle over and over again? We know that the battle with sin will never be over until we are home with Christ, but shouldn’t there be signs in our life that we are living for God? Where is the “peace the passes all understanding”? The problem is one of ownership. The fact is that our life is no longer our own. We belong to Christ. While this is simple to say it is a concept that, I believe, is lost on the majority of the church. I am convinced that if we truly knew what it meant to belong to Christ, that we would have a radically divergent view of how we live our lives in service to God compared to the way we currently live.

NAS 1 Corinthians 6:20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body​