One New Year’s Resolution: Be Transformed by the Gospel…Know and Follow Jesus. As followers of the Lord Jesus, we should demonstrate his attitude of humble service and sacrifice.
Be willing to sacrifice your rights and privileges in service to others, especially your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Be willing to lower yourself and be a servant.
Humbly obey God and give your entire life to Him – even if it will cost you dearly.
And what will follow? One day, you will be raised to be in the presence of Jesus forever. Your ultimate reward is not here, it’s in eternity with Jesus. Know and Follow Him now.
The cross has done for us what the flesh could not do; what keeping the law could not do: make us new people. The new creation has dawned with the coming of Christ; we live between the times of his comings. We will enjoy the blessing of the new creation because of the cross.
Don’t hear this as a call to try harder to be a good person, this is a call to believe the gospel and commune with the Spirit… And you will have victory if you have the Spirit
However, This is Only Possible in Christ, who is the Epitome of the Fruit of the Spirit:
Love – He is the one who showed amazing love in dying for those that would kill him
Joy – who counted it all joy to suffer for the sake of God’s purposes
Peace – He is the true peacemaker who brings peace between God and Man in his crucifixion
Patience – He is a man of patience, as he willingly takes on flesh and 33 years to accomplish his mission
Kindness, Goodness, and Gentleness – He showed kindness to the beggars, and blind, and to us spiritual beggars and blind
Faithfulness – And He was faithful, dependable, even as He wept and sweat drops of blood in a garden prepared to stand under the weight of God’s wrath due or sin not his… he was there, he could be counted on
Self-control – And He is the only man who’s appetites didn’t control him – who is able to look at a cross and say not “my will” but yours be done!
