Friday, July 6, 2012

6) No Longer Living on The Line:  You choose, either conquer rebellion, or let it conquer you.                    

BIBLE VERSE: Colossians 3
He Is Your Life
1-2 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.
3-4Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.
5-8And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.
9-11Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
15-17Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way. 

 MESSAGE:
I decided life is already complicated enough, so please tell me, where is the sense in making it even harder on ourselves? come on, I dare you to tell me what is the point of that? Because that’s all that sin-filled, rebel poser lifestyle does for us, the things that that lifestyle consists of make life straight up complicated. And honestly living with additional complications on top of the ones we already have basically prevents you from getting anywhere at all in life. You guys have mad potential,. SO USE IT!!!! Don’t be average like everyone else is choosing to be, why try to fit into this mess when you were meant to stand out, meant to be a part of something incredible something mad cool rad beyond belief. You don’t need to be stuck in this constant tribulation, these pointless degrading lifestyles. be great like I know you can. Because you know it will make your lives the best they can be. Don’t go down into the hopelessness like the rest of this world. Everyone is doing that, everyone seems to be tearing each other down so that they can appear as the best or the coolest. But guess what? They’re all fighting a game that can’t be won. They’re fighting to see who can screw their lives up the most. Seriously do you have any idea how many people are in that competition? How many people think they’re the coolest of cool, that they rule they’re hometown, that they are whats up. It’s a battle of deceit, it’s a competition that can only bring you down, even if you are winning it!!! (if you would like I can give you some personal experiences I’ve had to back this up. For now though I assure you it’s fact) You have got to know your better then that!!! Seriously I think you guys are winners, god thinks you guys are winners. That’s the reason he freed you from your chains. So heres what it comes down to. You can sit there like the rest of this world, so deceived that you still think your chained down and locked up and continue to be the pawn of sin, the sadness we all so badly long to be rid of, or you can run into glory. You can rebel. Choose to stand against all the pointless nonsense that is destroying people and their lives. Get creative, do something different, do something worthwhile. You aren’t constrained anymore, your free, you can work together, you can make a difference in so many peoples live. You can change this freaking world! And best of all you can wallow in the uncontainable joy that god gives. That feeling where every part of you screams out with joy because you know that your free, your burdens are got, you can run around and scream praises, your heart is pure, you are filled with goodness and you have more goodness then you can even handle. You can look around and see all of the poor people who think they’re still chained down, who are caught in hopelessness and you can show them that theres so much more. You can share the goodness and the freakishly intense joy that god has poured into you. Gosh he gives us so much of it that it pours out on its own. You can watch them be freed, you can help them be freed! Seriously do you know how meaningful that is? God’s kingdom has no fighting, no quarelling, no hatred, no stealing, no lust, no rape, no murder, no self glorification because all are in glory, because all want to build one another up, cause all love each other and because they truthfully love each other they actually care about each other. They couldn’t bring themselves to rape someone, or to even hurt someone, they couldn’t steal from their neighbor because they would actually care about their neighbor and they want him to have the absolute best, think about it. What if everyone on this planet were fighting to get the best for each other, fighting for one another instead of against one another? How insane would that be?! And the fact of the matter is that God gave us the wisdom to decipher right from wrong. He put within us the power to tell good from bad, and he expects us to choose what’s good , and when we don’t, we’re gonna be held accountable for it. God gave us wisdom to decipher good and capability to enact it, so why not work toward making these things a reality? If you think about it, the absolute only thing that is holding us back from these dreams becoming a reality is our daily decisions to choose to prevent these things. If we’re so fed up with a messed up world, then why don’t we choose to change it? If we really want a better future and better humanity, then why don’t we use the gifts God gave us to make that way. The only thing that’s preventing heaven on earth is you and I. We are the ones who are deeming it impossible by choosing not to pursue it. Why though? Do we not want it? Do we not want to better our lives? Do we not want a better world? Or are we just to lazy to fight for what we want? Let’s change this world as we know it you guys, one person at a time. . Starting with you and I. There’s nothing holding us back but ourselves, and with God the possibilities are endless.
5) A Wake Up Call                                                                                            
I know it's been a while, but i've gotta share this revelation with you guys. Take this gift to heart. Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did. Romans 6:6-11
So it comes down to this,. Are we just going to stay content,. Stuck in our chains, unmotivated and unwilling to find and fight for something better? Trust me my friends what Christ gives is the best, better than any earthly thing I can think of, so much more incredible than any rebellious experience that I have ever had. I mean that honestly and truthfully. You know a few of the things I have experienced, but with my stories you were shown that I have lived the best of both worlds, I have lived out the extent, the very utmost of both lifestyles. I rebelled into oblivion, only to find out that my rebellion wasn’t real, that it only tore down, and messed up, it made so many unnecessary complications in my life and my friends lives. Stuff that no one should ever have to go through, it was like pure torture. Not just the fine’s and the punishment, but what it does to you on the inside, the way it destroys the hearts and the potential of the people in your life. It gets to a point where you know you can’t do anything, you deem things hopeless, you deem life hopeless, and your only choice is to watch as your world and your best friends worlds fall apart. It may not get that far, but regardless the good things about you and within you start to disappear, and you start to lose who you really are. You get lost in deceit. What I’ve realized is there is already enough screwed up and hopeless things in this world, that this world lives to tear one another down and the sad thing is that they think it actually makes them look like they’re on top, they think it makes them look cool. But did you ever stop to think maybe that’s why we live in such a screwed up world? That maybe those ‘cool’ people, the ones who are spending their time tearing others down are the reason that this world is filled with so many messed up things and awful experiences? You guys have got to know by now that the reason some people are filled with so much hatred so devoted to tearing others down is because they hate themselves and they think if they can make others look worse it will make them look better. Because if they tear others down then they’ll be able to take more from them and therefore get more for themselves. They do what they hate and they hate what they do, they lose the power to make something out of their lives and they fall victim to substances, selfishness, lust, and deceit, These things are what make us lose control of our lives. They give us cravings, impulses and desires that we can’t reject, that haunt our thoughts, that tempt us and distract us from doing anything useful or meaningful. They make us lose the capability to build a future because they make it so we can’t even learn from our pasts and they make it so we can’t build ourselves up because we’re too busy getting dragged down by the past, don’t you get it, these things cause us to drag ourselves down, without us even noticing it. They make us lose touch with who we really are and with what we’re really capable of. So many people, get to the point where they just can’t say NO to these things, . They make up all the excuses in the world, but when it comes down to it they’ve lost control, they can’t choose to make something out of their lives, because they’ve lost the capability to choose good and make anything out of their lives period. It gets to the point where your only choice is how much more am I gonna mess my life up today? People can deny this all they want, but they’re only making things harder on themselves