- Ben Stewart
- Jan 1
- 11 min read
Goal for 2025…being faithful to Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus the Christ of Nazareth said…I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, He shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. 10 The thief cometh not, but that He may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly. 11 I am the Good shepherd: the Good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep…Joh 10:9-10 9
Jesus answered and said unto them…This is the work of God…that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent. Heb 1:13 ASV But of which of the angels hath He said at any time, Sit Thou on my right hand, Till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy Feet?
Jesus also said…Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my word, he shall never see death.
Jesus therefore said to those Jews that had believed him, If ye abide in My word, then are ye truly My disciples; 32 and ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free. Mar 16:16 ASV He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieves (chooses to not obey the Truth…Jesus died so you could never choose an evil deed again and so all your evil could be made right with God and forgiven) shall be condemned.
Do you still believe in your baptism…yes or no? Listen to what is written…because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: 10 for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
The Best Decision You Will Ever Make
1. I want to tell you about the best decision I have ever made in my life. Before I do though, I want you to think about what the best decision is you have ever made.
2. I am a person who has spent a lot of time going down the wrong road. I have been drunk before I was 15, I started smoking around 12, I started lying around 6 to get out of trouble, I lost my virginity when I was 15, I started selling pot and smoking pot my senior year in High School, essentially I lived by one rule: try anything once and if you like it try it twice.
3. I can summarize my life with drugs and pass on some valuable knowledge to you. If you mess with drugs long enough one of three things will happen to you: 1. You will become a junkie 2. You will go to jail 3. You will end up an act of violence
4. Let me tell you about how lucky people end up lucky.
I. The future belongs to the prepared
A. There is no such thing as luck
1. Definition of lucky and unlucky
a. So, you are driving a car and you have a flat tire, you can call that bad luck. Or you can call having a spare tire good luck. Or you can have a flat spare tire too really bad luck.
b. You see the difference in the bad luck scenarios was preparation. If you have envisioned having a flat and prepared a spare, then if a flat occurs you will have good luck because you have made yourself ready for that situation.
2. How to make yourself lucky
a. In life opportunity will come your way, but if you are unable to recognize it or if you are unprepared to cease it then you will have bad luck.
b. Say a man comes to you and says I will give you 50 bucks to mow my yard, now if you are prepared, then you are having already prepared for this opportunity say ok and mow his yard. However, if you are unprepared, then you would say sir I have no way to mow your yard.
c. It is what you prepared yourself for that will determine how successful you will become and to what path of career you will take.
3. No such thing as Karma, but God says reap what you sow (Gal 6:7-8)
a. “be not deceived God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. For he that sows to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting”
b. That is satan’s devices, he counterfeits God. He is a liar and there is no truth in him.
c. All these other religions are just tools of satan used to deceive those that would be saved if they just followed Jesus Christ.
B. Preparedness is the key “knowing is half the battle”
1. The only way to achieve a goal is to envision one
a. What are your goals? Do you have any? Where do you want to be in 5 years? 10? 15?
b. Do you want to own your own business? Do you want to be an apprentice and learn a trade like a mason, or an electrician or a millwright? Or do you want to go to college?
c. If you aim for nothing, then you will hit it every time.
2. To capitalize on a goal, you must do the necessary ground work
a. If you want to own your own business, then you are going to need product or service to sell. You must prepare yourself to supply those things to your customers. If you want to learn a trade, then you need to find a Journeyman and ask if He will teach you. If you want to go to college then you will have to find a way to pay for the college education.
b. You need to get in the habit of paying it forward. In other words, what you did today will help you tomorrow.
c. Of course, the best decision I have ever made was when I decided to become a Christian.
3. Are you prepared to face God when you die? (Rom 6:23)
a. “The wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” Rom 6:23
b. “For all have sinned and fell short of the glory (perfection) of God” Rom 3:23
c. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God” Rom 10:17
C. How to prepare for Eternal Rewards:
1. It all starts with the Fear of God (Proverbs) (Heb 11:6)
a. How can you fear God unless you know that He exists?
b. “But without faith it is impossible to please God for He that comes to God must believe that He exists and is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him” Heb 11:6
c. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” Prov 1:7. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy understanding” Prov 9:10
2. Add to Faith knowledge of salvation (2Pet 1:5-8)
a. “and beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith’ virtue and to your virtue knowledge and to your knowledge self-control and to your self-control endurance, and endurance godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love for if these things be in you and abound they make you that you will not be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” 2 Pet 1:5-8
3. The Good news of Christ:
II. Jesus is enough to supply your needs spiritual and physical
A. Abiding in Jesus will supply all your needs, not your wants
1. We are called to be faithful first (Matt 6:24-33)
a. Notice the text says God feeds the birds, and how can you extend years to your life? God clothes the grass of the field, summarizes in verse 33 what to do to have God provide you with everything you need.
b. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you” Matt 6:33
2. Jesus is enough to balance the scales (2 Pet 1:3)
a. “According as His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that has called us to glory and virtue” 2 Pet 1:3
b. I picture a checkbook and a balancing beam like the one lady justice holds. One side is the money I must pay for my debts on the other is my sin debt. Jesus is the rich shepherd that always pays off my debts so that whatever I lack is supplied to keep me in good standing with God the Father.
3. Jesus lives to make intercession on behalf of his children (Heb 7:25)
a. “Wherefore Jesus is able to save them to the uttermost that come to God by himself, seeing He lives to make intercession for them” Heb 7:25
b. The Holy Spirit we receive when we are baptized also makes intercession for us: “Likewise the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be heard” Rom 8:26
c. “If we confess our sins, Jesus is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
B. Counting the cost of belonging to Jesus Christ
1. You will gain all that Jesus has but Jesus will gain all that you have
a. When the long-lost son came home to His Father and His Father gave a party to welcome him back, the brother that never left his Father’s ways, was upset and the Father said son all that I have is yours.
b. “If any man comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yes even his own life too, he cannot be my disciple, and whosever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” Luke 14:26
c. You should understand that to become a Christian is a lifelong commitment and usually is difficult: Listen to what Jesus says, “Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few” Matt 7:13-14
2. People will hate you and despise you and say bad things about you
a. Jesus said, “blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of God” Matt 5:10
b. “blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” Matt 5:11
c. Some people just do not like people that follow the Light. Some people just like to watch other suffer. Some people just do not like Christians.
3. You will have to live a righteous life or a life of right doing
a. Jesus taught us how He want us to deal with others, when He tells us to love our neighbors as our self, Mark 12:29-31.
b. As you learn to practice this principle you will learn to always do right by your neighbor and thus will have lots of good fruits because of it.
C. Jesus is the Good Shepherd
1. Jesus calls himself the good shepherd
a. Listen: “I am the good shepherd the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep” John 10:11
b. Jesus has already done everything to keep you from being torn apart from the wolves just like when a real shepherd watching physical sheep, but Jesus was willing to fight and overcome the wolves by laying His own life down to save the sheep.
c. He was God that became a man and allowed sinful man to kill Him just, so He could offer you a way to be saved.
2. Jesus knows His sheep
a. You cannot fool God. You can go to church and pretend to be a Christian and fool men, but you cannot fool God.
b. Jesus knows, He intimately knows His children and calls them by name
3. Jesus secures His sheep
a. Jesus lives to make intercession for His children. He is not slack and does not have to be provoked to perform or fulfill His word. No Jesus is willing and wants to be the Savior that saves, He wants to save you and wants you to ask Him
III. The Father and His adoptive nature
A. The God of gods, The Creator, The Father of all things is God
1. God created it and therefore owns it all
a. If you made a fish tank, then you made you some fish to put into it, would you say you own the fishes and the fish tank? Yes or no…
b. God made this world and all that is in it. It is all His even the fish that do not realize it.
c. “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine, if I were hungry, I would not tell you for the world is mine and the fullness thereof” Psalms 50:10-12
2. Sin and salvation are not an afterthought
a. Eph 1:4-5, according as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be Holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will
b. 1 Pet 1:20, Peter says this through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit about Jesus, Who truly was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you”
c. Jesus was pre-planned to save mankind before God ever made man.
B. God is gracious to those that reject Him
1. Why is there evil in the world if God is all knowing and all powerful?
a. There is no such things as darkness…it is the absence of Light…Evil is the absence of God just like cold is the absence of heat…evil is choosing your will over the Truth from our Creator.
2. God still provides a world to live in for the ungodly
a. Even though God did not create evil, He did give us free choice and He still allows those that reject His ways, to live and exist in His world until the day He decides to end it.
b. He gives the sunshine for the immoral and righteous
c. He feeds the hungry and not just the righteous
3. God uses evil people to accomplish His plans
a. I said earlier that God owns everything. And He in His wisdom has used evil people to accomplish His will.
b. He used the evil idolaters of Israel’s neighbors, to punish his people to bring them to repentance.
c. It is said that he will deliver a Christian to satan when that Christian will not let go of his sin, 1 Cor 5:5, 1 Tim 1:20.
C. God adopts those that follow and want to be in His Family
1. Do you want to go to heaven?
2. Do you want to be adopted into the Kingdom of Heaven?
3. When you become a Christian, you are made a new creature.
Conclusion:
1. I gave you some helpful advice in these words. If you use or are selling drugs, then one of three things will happen to you: junkie, jail, or jumped…Jesus gives us power over addiction no reason to continue being addicted. I told you some helpful ways to create your own luck. By taking thought for direction or opportunities you want in your life or some call having a vision for your future, then spend your effort to acquire the things you will need to capitalize on the opportunity you desire or equip yourself to fulfill your goal. I also told you that God has a rule called reap what you sow.
2. I told you the best decision of my life was becoming a Christian. I told you about how Jesus provides everything we need physically and spiritually. How He lives to intercede on our behalf and always has you on His mind to keep you safe and secure in Heaven’s Citizenship.
3. I also spoke to the fear of God. How God created it all and owns it all and can end it all. I also told you that He does not make you do anything but gives you a choice. To those that want His love and protection He is willing to adopt us into His family, that we call the kingdom of God. Do you want to be a member of the kingdom of God? Will you be baptized today? Yes or no.
Father…I still confess my faith in my baptism…and ask You would help me be faithful a second at a time that I may remain faithful always…even after You send Jesus to judge the world in righteousness…in Jesus of Nazareth’s name amen.
Try…A…Daily Pause for Prayer and Devotional a Wellsaid Christian Devotional about the teachings of Jesus… https://www.anopenbiblestudy.com/blog-by-ben-the-friend
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