Worship and Witness

Good morning bloggers!! I'm so excited about todays lesson in sunday school. Last year I watched a sermon from Joyce Meyers and she was teaching us about God removing things in our life that will not work while living a christian life. She had a cookie cutter and some play dough (she also had another teaching where she used a small tree and a pair of shears). She was teaching us to understand that when we are saved God has to get in our soul and start cutting away at things that will hinder our walk with Him. It was such a valuable lesson for me! I have been wanting to use this scernio in my class. At church we are doing a series called misson possible and today our pastor is preaching about witnessing (last week he taught us about worship) so I'm combinging both messages into my sunday school class. I believe the 2 go together like needle and thread.





While preparing for the lesson, I realized that our whole body is for worship and witness of God. I'm not sure that we understand that fully. I'm saying that in reference to me, I know that I didn't understand that at 16 when I first got saved. Many of us know the verse that says when we believe that Jesus died for us, His spirit comes to live in us, the old man is dead and the new man lives, but do we really understand what that means? I know I waited for changes to occur the second after I said amen to the salvation prayer. It didn't happen like that. I was 16 and I'm now 39 and just 2 years ago did I really start to understand what is to take place for the changes to occur. 21 years of wondering why the changes never seemed to happen to me, feeling as though God didn't want me, is this really what living for God is all about? How do we truely worship and witness God when we don't feel any different than we did before we got saved? I feel that's why so many walk away from their faith because they don't understand what their responsibilty is in their relationship with Jesus. This brings us to our lesson this morning.



Romans 12:1 tells us that we to give our bodies to God because of what He has done for us. What does "give our bodies" mean? It means that we stop fighting the changes God is trying to make in us. That's pretty simple to understand, harder to do right? I know for me it is. We also need to understand that it's something that is a everyday thing that will happen until we are in Heaven. Changing never ends! But we also need to understand that we are changing for the good of God and it should be a joyful time, change isn't easy but when it's done for God it's sure worth it. It's our responsibility to allow those changes to happen. 1 Peter 2:5 tells us that God is building (shaping, changing) our bodies into His temple! God has to remove things in us that just will not work for us in the relationship that we have with Him. It's the same thing with relationships with other people, we tell them what we will accept from them and what we won't accept, why should our relationship with Jesus be any different? He is the supreme being in the relationship and we are the ones that have to be shaped just right for the relationship to work. Our flesh will fight hard to not have to die, but it has to be the choice we make in order to have the kind of relationship with Jesus that died for us to be able to have with Him. Hard to understand during the younger years but the sooner they realize this the sooner their relationship can be strongly built. I look at my kids (16 and 10) and think to myself "the sooner you learn how important this is the longer you will live the kind of life that Jesus has planned for you". How awesome is that? I wish that I would have understood this at the age of 16, alot of things might have been alot different.
Have a blessed day in the Lord everyone
~Loradoodle~