“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body”. (Philippians 3:20-21).
Happy Monday earthlings who have their citizenship in heaven. I listened to the perfect song that ties in with the new year quickly approaching. It is entitled Live with Abandon. It’s the only way to live for Jesus – totally devoted – what a great way to enter 2021. In fact, it’s the only way Jesus will allow us to be His disciples. In Mark 8:34-37 Jesus says, “And He summoned the crowd together with His disciples, and said to them, ‘If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it benefit a person to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what could a person give in exchange for his soul?” That’s another way of saying “live with abandon”! And we all need to enter 2021 with that reckless abandonment to follow Jesus.
Read Romans 12:1-2 and II Corinthians 5:14-17. Then listen to Live with Abandon by Newsboys. After that do some self-examination on where you are on the “commitment meter” as you wave goodbye to 2020 and say hello to 2021. We cannot earn salvation through good works, or merit salvation because we are soooo committed; however, we must surrender totally to Jesus and follow Him with abandonment of this life because we treasure eternal life more.
Romans 12:1-2
Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
2 Corinthians 5:14-17
For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that those who live would no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose on their behalf.
Therefore from now on we recognize no one by the flesh; even though we have known Christ by the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.