What really matters
What are the things that really matter?
We were created to enjoy God by giving him glory for goodness in our lives. And of all the good things that He has done for us, the greatest is the gift of knowing and loving Jesus Christ.
This might sound odd in our world or even egotistical of God. Yet, if we believe He created us, then we should trust that He knew what He was doing. We shouldn’t believe we were created for some arbitrary reason, but for something very specific and very good and very enjoyable.
These are some of the things that really matter. From our children to our parents to our siblings to our spouses, God has been very intentional in what He has been doing in our lives since our birth. Even if we’ve made a mess of things, God is not distracted, He continues to shape our lives for good. We are His beloved creation, designed for a life that gets its greatest pleasure from knowing and loving Jesus.
Yet, Jesus Christ will mean very little to us unless we understand why we need Him and why He is so great.
Even that sentence means very little unless we see something very negative and very wrong.
An honest and sober assessment of our life reveals that we are selfish people who are very prone to seek our own pleasure regardless of our health, our parenting, our jobs, other people, and our marriages.
When we’re honest, we’ll admit our hearts are corrupt, and we’ve made some serious mistakes. And even on the best of days, we can’t seem to help ourselves, for we continue to be selfish. Our hearts seem to have a life of their own, and we continually seek what we know is not right.
It is in light of this problem, what Christians call sin, that Jesus Christ becomes so desirable. For it is He that can rescue us from our own hearts and restore us to what God has designed for us.
While our hearts sin, it is Jesus who initiates the our desire to change, and it is He who works to transform us.
These are the things that really matter. We need to understand who we were designed to be, understand what is wrong with us, and understand the greatness of Jesus Christ’s ability to change, restore, and transform us.
The power for all this is in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus died because of sin. He paid the price we were to have paid for sinning. We, too, are to die a symbolic death to the sins in our life. Not to die is to live in them and to suffer the grief such things bring into our life. To die to them means to reject what is bad for us and to live for what is good.
Jesus rose from the dead by the power of God. He was dead and God resurrected Him. The same power that resurrected Jesus is what Jesus uses to change, restore, and transform us.
That power is in us through our faith in Him. And our faith is most alive when we love and seek our joy through Jesus Christ.
If you want what is best for your children, your family, your spouse, and your marriage, seek to know and love Jesus Christ with all of your being.
These are the things that matter most.