CHOOSE THE LIFE

The Challenge to Live a Committed Life

Sunday, October 28, 2007

 

*                        Team Challenge

 

Ephesians 2:10

    For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

 

1 Peter 4:10-11

    Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. [11] If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

 

1.     Live in such a way that people see Christ.

2.     Live in such a way to be available to serve others.

3.     Serve in the strength of Christ and to honor Christ.

 

Wrong CHALLEGE: to become more self centered rather than Christ centered.

We can easy be deceived into thinking we are doing all the right things, the right way, with the right attitude.

 

Jeremiah 17:9

    The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

 

 

*                        Team Objective

 

Romans 15:18-20 (NIV)
18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done-- 19 by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. 20 It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation.

1.     To demonstrate and teach God’s power to change lives.

2.     Teach the full Gospel.

 

WRONG OBJECTIVE: not teaching the TRUTH.

*                        Team Attitude

 

2 Corinthians 4:8-16

    We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; [9] persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. [10] We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. [11] For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. [12] So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

    [13] It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, [14] because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. [15] All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

    [16] Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

 

1. To be willing to put aside comfort, pride, recognition, friends, family for the sake of transformation.

2. Moving forward in faith and obiedence.

 

WRONG ATTITUDE: claiming faith but not being obedient.

 

Luke 9:24

    For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.