Transcription
So how's the world benefit if you have eternal life and you're still angry at your boss and you still shut down your spouse?
Somehow we got tricked into preaching a gospel that benefits me without transforming me. Deny yourself, take up your cross. Now you're following Jesus. What's pick up your cross? You never let sin against you produce sin in you. You never repay evil with evil. You overcome evil with good. It's you, you, you. Toned down a harsh word with a kind word. You give your shirt and your tunic. You go an extra mile because you've already laid down your life. That's called carry your cross.
Could you imagine Jesus thinking like we've been taught to think, having the feelings we've been tricked into having through the motives we live by? Do you understand your emotions were not given by God? The ones you grew up with were not from the Lord. Do you get that? People say, "Well, God gave us emotions." Stop giving him credit for the chaos we grew up with. God didn't make you to be angry, frustrated, jealous, unforgiving, antagonized, ticked off, competitive. He didn't make any of that. We became that when Adam got separated from God, and we were all born into Adam.
So what was created to love became in need of love because it was cut off from the source of love. So we were all born into the need of love. From the time you can remember, you needed support, valued attention, and people get crushed in that arena. They either become broken and introverted and insecure or hard and a fighter. By a very young age, you're nothing more than what you became through how you responded to what you've been through, and your story becomes your identity, not the truth of why you're here. That's why people cling to their past so tight because it's the only place they'd ever found any sense of identity, whether good or bad. It's all they know about them.
And in the gospel, you gotta call that dead. You gotta come out from that. You gotta put that off, and you're gonna put him on. Old things passed away, behold all things become new. I'm not a little boy that was touch-strong anymore. I'm not a guy that didn't have a daddy that was there for me and had an alcoholic father. I'm not a guy that lost the mother after 40 years of sickness. I'm a born-again, spirit-filled man without his shoes. I don't have issues. I have the kingdom of God on the inside of me.
And I finally understand why mercy woke me up this morning because it gave me one more day to shine, to walk in love, and live by the spirit and be more like him. And if I love him, I'll live what he says. Yeah, you.