The gospel changes everything.
Whether you have followed Jesus for a few days or followed him for thirty years, you know that he is our hope and our salvation. But when you wake up and look in the mirror each day, how do you change into a person who lives and looks more like Jesus? How does your day-to-day spiritual growth happen?
This is where we’re headed with this six-week study. And let’s be clear. This isn’t a self-help study. There’s no checklist of things for you to strike off that will take you from point A to point B. The gospel is what changes you. The work of the Holy Spirt in your life changes you. So, what does it look like to let the gospel transform you every day? We’re going to discover that we don’t work for our salvation. We work out our salvation.
There is a big word we use for working out our salvation called sanctification. It just means the process of becoming more like Jesus every single day. We love him. We have a relationship with him. Now how do we live like him?
We want to change, but we cannot do it our own. Does that make you feel free or like a failure? For those of us who like control and being able to do everything on our own, the need for help feels uncomfortable. But an artist does not stare at his paint brushes and expect them to create by themselves. He picks them up. He combines them with paint. He cleans them. He creates. In the same way, the Holy Spirit works in us and through us. Another one of our studies, Enjoying Jesus, states: “Jesus doesn’t call us to simply put his teaching into practice by our own willpower. If we try to do that, we will fail. We will be utterly unprepared to turn the other cheek or to love our enemy if we haven’t spent time with Christ in the unseen, everyday things.”
We were made to reflect our savior, but we don’t do that on our own. We become more like Jesus when we surrender and let him work in us. You are his creation, and he has a great plan in mind for you. When you get to know him more, it becomes so much easier to see that his way for you is better than your own way. Take a deep breath knowing that.
There is hope. You can change because Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit changes you. Praise be to God. Hope is alive.
I am exhausted under the weight of myself. I am utterly disabled by the weight of this world. I am overwhelmed and angry and bitter and have never felt more "homesick" than at this particular time in my life. I’m tired. And, I’m scared…I’m scared of losing people, I’m scared for my son, I’m scared of being needed when I don’t have anything left to give, I’m scared of being sick and tired all the time, I’m scared I’ll never feel joy again, and I’m scared of being scared. I feel destroyed…and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that’s a God thing. My hopes for this study is to begin the process of sanctification…I feel like I had it before, but the new adult me…she needs to be transformed.
You said what is exactly on my heart Aleisha! Thank you!
I have been a Christian for many years. My Hope for this study is that I can regain the fire at once rained inside of you for my Lord and Savior.
My hope is to be rooted even deeper in Christ. I want to have the roots so when the storms come my tree isn’t one to fall. I can swag in the wind but always remember the truths about Hod are never changing. I want to let the Holy Spirit equip me with tools to take into battle in a world that worships self.
I am hoping for working out my sanctification. I hope for change in my life. What I would like to be different by the end is walking with God more consistently and having an intimate relationship with Him. I hope to become a vessel. I hope to be able to hear and share His Word.
To learn and practice making Jesus a focus in my life in hopes that living for and like Him will become more natural in my day to day life.
My hope for this study is I can become more like Jesus and learn to his plan for my life and not get into the way myself.
To trust Jesus more…To feel more like His daughter and safe in His arms…To find my identity in Him, not in fleeting circumstances
Being renewed by the spirit, because a new creature that is a slave for righteousness and learning to let go of the old ways of choosing what this work want you to: have focus on, be distracted by, medicate pain, loss, failure, and all there hardships that Jesus promised that we would face in Jn 6. Paul is stating the living within the spirit (Rm8) takes away the need to be double minded (Jm 4). I face mental health issues, however I am also learning to be a coach.I feel God has brought me to things like compulsive addictions, and anxiety to demonstrate that all the ways I have tried to do it on my own, everything has become worse. I see i need the Spirit, to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and bear his easy yoke rather than fall apart with "the way that seems right to a man" (Pr 16) I am serving things other than God to ease my discomforts or trying to take control and God says simply that we cannot serve 2 masters, and that he is a jealous God. I have all of this swirling around and around and its all connected. Christ gave us peace. He gave us the Holy Spirit. Peace is a fruit of the spirit…. i’ll stop before I get too twisted and yet amazed at how God brings it all together.
Hearing that the sanctifying work is for Jesus and the Holy Spirit, I would like to partner in obedience, surrender, trust, faithfulness for the rest of all of my days in this life. It’s this gift that I want to joyfully participate in. I have nothing else to give but my whole self. I’m so broken without God and I desperately need the whole of Him. I can’t handle so I’m bringing hope as I do this study.
See my family, as Jesus sees my family. Take my eyes off of myself, and put it on Jesus.
Understand my kids are teenagers and not to take it personally. My person is one with God.
Understand my husband is not doing anything to me. He is going through his own struggles.
For me to be rooted in God, not in the world or dictated by my feelings. To be one with God and feel that he loves and respects me and that’s really what I need.