Perseverance! Endurance! Life was never meant to be a sprint. But a matter of getting up every day and moving forward toward the goal. When it comes to being a follower of Jesus Christ, endurance is a must! Endurance implies there is an opposite force pushing back against us to quit. When we have things in our lives that are valuable to us, we are willing to push past the conflict, obstacles, or people in our way. This core value of perseverance is critical to our finishing our calling. Let&apos;s discover in the gospel our ability to live an enduring faith in a conflicting world.

GospelLife360 Podcast

ENDURING FAITH

We are saved by the power and glory of Jesus Christ through His death on the cross, the shedding of His blood for our redemption, and His resurrection giving us victory over sin and death! But through the sanctifying work of His word by the power of His Holy Spirit, we are to destroy the strongholds of our flesh that we might take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ!When we allow half-truths, speculations, and lofty things to be raised up against the knowledge of God, we are allowing those strongholds to be built higher and not torn down. From the time we took our first breaths in this world, the family we were born into, the culture we were raised in, and even some of the religious groups we were a part of have given us half-truths and sometimes outright lies, that have become strongholds preventing us from walking in faith and knowing God&apos;s freedom!Let&apos;s open up the gospel together and let the word of God through the Holy Spirit reveal to us those strongholds robbing us of the intimacy God has called us to!

STRONGHOLDS HINDERING OUR FAITH

Freedom! What does that mean to you? What does that freedom look like? What is freedom from? In a world of great diversity, there is a diversity of answers to those questions. God has given us a free will in order that we may have a relationship with Him based upon the choice of mutual love.  People, in general, have taken that free will and have convinced themselves that they can attain their own freedom by exercising that free will. What a fine web of corruption we have weaved! With everyone exercising their freedom of choice, speech, and distorted view of who they are and how they want to live is it any wonder we find ourselves heading over the cliff of distorted freedom. Jesus said that if we abide in Him we can know the truth and that truth will make us free! It was for freedom that Christ died and we are warned not to turn our freedom into an opportunity for our flesh. Our flesh will corrupt anything it touches. We are called to die to ourselves that we may live in the freedom that Christ died for. Let&apos;s open up the gospel and discover the freedom that Christ died for!

THE FALSE FACE OF FREEDOM

This past year and a half have been a wilderness journey for many, if not all of us. The wilderness we are speaking of is not one of plush forest and green meadows but barren desert lands with limited or no water available for us. And in the midst of our journey, we have come across things that we have not asked for nor understand why they are even there.This is exactly the same situation that the people of Israel found themselves in when God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and took them through the wilderness en route to the Promised Land. Our wilderness journey like those in our illustration in Deuteronomy chapter 8 was being prepared for what God had already promised them and prepared for them. God was attempting to prepare their hearts to receive and live out fully what He had designed for them.Whatever wilderness you are going through right now are discovering God&apos;s glory and presence within your circumstances? Don&apos;t look for the quickest exit for you will miss all that God desires for you to know and experience with Him.

MANNA IN THE WILDERNESS

No matter how talented or gifted we are, because of our human frailties, we all struggle with our inadequacies. We may not share them out loud but we experience the anxieties that come from those moments of personal conflict. We begin to push ourselves and attempt to regain those times when we felt adequate and in control. Feelings can be deceiving! Being adequate in ourselves is a deception that creates most of our anxiety and fear in life. We will discover today what the gospel has to say to us concerning where our adequacy comes from and the victory that we can know through Jesus Christ!

HUMAN INADEQUACY

The foundation to most of our struggles in life is found in our efforts to maintain our identities. Who are we, and what factors determine our identity? How much influence does that world around us have on how we view ourselves. I believe the greater question is not who are we, but who&apos;s are we. As followers of Jesus Christ, the world we live in should no longer be the determining factor concerning who we are. God&apos;s word tells us that since the fall in the garden He has subjected us to futility in hopes that we would come to our senses and repent, coming to Him that we might discover the freedom and the glory that comes from being His children. Throughout Scripture, we see the same temptation from the enemy attempting to deceive men to step outside of who they are and who&apos;s they are as followers of Jesus Christ! Where do you stand in your identity? Who&apos;s are you?  It will be seen by the corruption and futility or the life and peace you live out every day!

WHO'S ARE WE

We have so much information available to us today, politically, socially, and religiously that it can be difficult to determine what is true and what isn&apos;t. There are so many conflicting teachings. How do we determine what teaching we should hold onto and which we need to run away from? What does the gospel have to say concerning how we teach His word? What are the evidences of faithful teaching? We are to examine ourselves and our teaching for they can lead to a false understanding of Scripture and to an empty salvation. Let the word of God and the Holy Spirit speak to us today!

WHAT TEACHING ARE WE HEARING TODAY?

We don&apos;t get it! We may think that we do, but I really don&apos;t believe or even think we understand the love that God has for us. It is so easy to fall back on our limited understanding of what love is and how it is normally expressed in our world today, that we have dishonored God in the process. Because God is love, our expressions of love toward one another are evidence that we just don&apos;t get it. Jesus said that we are to love one another just as He has loved us. He has told us that because He died we all have died and that we no longer live for ourselves. Therefore the love of Christ should control us and we should no longer look at man according to the flesh.We are told that those who truly love are born of God. Those that do not love are not born of God nor do they know God at all. We can only love one another out of the overflow of our love relationship with Jesus Christ. Because God so loved the world we are to so love the people in this world as He did. God demonstrated His love toward us while we were yet sinners. It was the love of God that brought us to repentance. How is your love demonstrating the glory of God to the world you live in?

WE DON'T GET IT

Friendships are good, we all desire to have a few friends. If social media is any indication you would think that friends are the most important thing in the world. We boast about how many friends we have on FaceBook and other social media platforms as if it were the barometer of who we are and our status in life.But we are told in Scripture that friendship with the world makes us an enemy of God. It&apos;s not that having friendships with others is something God looks down on but His concern comes in when our friendships in the world become the influence of how we live our lives.  Gal 6:14 But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.  The Apostle Paul stated that he died daily. He died to the things in the world that drew him away from the life God had called him to. He stated in another place that anything that was gain to him he considered it as rubbish that he might gain Christ. The world we live in is screaming for everyone&apos;s attention, offering empty promises that leave us empty and broken. The world is under the influence of Satan himself and his objective is to lead us away from the life God desires for us to have. The enemy began in the Garden of Eden and has not stopped his deception and corruption for one moment. Making friendship with the world is making friends with the enemy. Let&apos;s open up the gospel and discover how to live in the world but not of it.

FRIENDSHIP WITH THE WORLD

For such a time as this! In a world full of turmoil, suffering, and pain, if there is any time that men who are after God&apos;s own heart need to come together it is now.During this ongoing pandemic, our lives and how we live them have drastically changed! How we live out our faith has dramatically changed! God has called us in Col. 1:28-29 to present every man complete in Christ! The enemy has done an effective job of distracting men from being what God has called us to. For us to become complete requires a commitment to one another, a willingness to get our hands dirty labor, some blood sweat, and tears, and a surrendered heart to God&apos;s workmanship. This is your invitation to God&apos;s call to join us to become complete together for His glory. You can go to http://everymancomplete.org/ and contact us at everymancomplete@gmail.com Never be ashamedBro Jeff

CALLING ALL MEN!

Have you ever gone to a class reunion and had someone approach you to say hello and you didn&apos;t recognize them? You find out who they are and you said, "I hardly recognized you!"  There had been such dramatic change that they didn&apos;t look like you remembered them. When we come to Christ, there should be something significant that happens in our life that we may not look different on the outside, but how we live our lives outwardly should bring the question, "I hardly recognized you!" It&apos;s not that we are perfect, but the presence, love, grace, and power of Christ in us should make us notably different from those who know us. God is transforming us into the image of His Son. He is not making us into a better version of us!  We&apos;ve been crucified with Christ and it is no longer we who live, but Christ!who lives within us. Life should be differentLet&apos;s open up the gospel and discover the gospel difference!

I HARDLY RECOGNIZED YOU

We discover in Scriptures that God&apos;s love never fails and that nothing can separate us from the love of God. We also see that God&apos;s grace is sufficient and that where our sin abounded God&apos;s grace abounded all the more. But many times we seem to attach how we receive God&apos;s love and grace with how we receive God&apos;s blessings. I believe what the last stanza of the Hymn "Showers of Blessings" says sums up what I have discovered the gospel has to say concerning blessings. "There shall be showers of blessing if we but trust and obey; There shall be seasons refreshing If we let God have His way." God&apos;s blessings for our lives are contingent upon that two-letter word; "if".  Blessings are dependent upon our obedience. Obedience is not doing good things that we want to do but what God has called us to do. Jesus said that He could only do what He saw the Father doing and we must follow the example of Jesus and do what we see the Father doing. Let&apos;s open up the gospel and discover how we can know the blessings that God has prepared for us!

SHOWERS OF BLESSINGS????

Where has the reverence gone? God is love! His grace is sufficient! His mercies are new every morning! He is patient and longsuffering! But He is Holy, Righteous, Sovereign, and worthy of all praise and glory!Through our familiarity with God&apos;s word and the repetitive approach of our worship experiences, we have developed an irreverence for the God of our salvation. We honor Him with our lips but our hearts are far from Him!The evidence of our irreverence is seen in our lack of love and respect for one another. It is seen in our political arena, our communities, our churches, and our own personal lives and families. We can only live the life we are called to by God through the overflow of our relationship with Him.  When our reverence for Him falters so does every other relationship we are involved in!It&apos;s time for the people of God to repent! It&apos;s not about pointing the finger at those systems and people around us but looking to our own hearts of worship. Humbling ourselves in reverence and awe before the God of all creation. We must worship in spirit and truth! What&apos;s the truth about your reverence?

WHERE HAS THE REVERENCE GONE

Scripture tells us that there are those who have ears to hear but do not hear!   Our faith is dependant upon that hearing. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.  There is more to hearing than our eardrum picking up sound waves and our brains deciphering those sounds. There is a spiritual side to our hearing and then the evidence of our hearing that brings forth fruit. Join us as we open up the gospel and discover how good our hearing is!

FREE HEARING TEST

Nobody wants to be labeled a loser! But as we look into the gospel today we can discover how to avoid becoming the biggest loser!In all four gospels, we see the verse, " if you find your life you will lose it, and if you lose your life for My sake and the gospel&apos;s sake you will find it." As seen, each of the gospels brings out this truth, each gospel has a different illustration to make this truth a personal reality to us.  The same theme is present in each illustration, the theme of dying to ourselves and to the worldly things that call for our devotion, and making Jesus Christ the surpassing value that we live for. We have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live! This is the life that we lose! The life that was dead in sin! The life that was separated from God!Why would we attempt to save the life, that Jesus died on the cross to set us free from? The biggest loser is the one who continues to choose the life where Jesus Christ is not the fullness of that life! If we lose our life we will find the life that comes through the resurrection power of the gospel. Jesus Christ is that life!

THE BIGGEST LOSER

GospelLIfe 360 is about discovering how the gospel of Jesus Christ impacts and transforms our lives on a daily basis. It's discovering who Jesus is what He has done what He is doing and what He has promised to us by HIs mercy and grace. This is not a gospel about us but about how the gospel brings us hope, life, and the freedom to know love and extend that love to others.It's not just about going to heaven but about knowing Jesus Christ in a life-changing way! Come and join us in discovering the GospelLIfe 360!

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GospelLife360 Podcast

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