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God is real. He is alive. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, present everywhere.
He wise, good, kind, fair, honest, right and true.
He created everything that exists. He created us for His purposes. We exist for His purposes. We exist for Him.
He is the judge of humanity. On the Day of Judgment, He will judge everyone who has ever lived.
Those who lived for Him will live with Him forever. Those who did not live for Him will not live with Him forever.
In light of these realities, we should want to live for God.
So, how do we live for God?
The Word of God teaches us that we can’t earn our salvation by human effort, good deeds, law-keeping, Torah-observance, by being good people or by our good deeds outweighing our bad deeds.
We are not saved by anything we can do. There is absolutely nothing we can do to save ourselves.
We have a nature that is too fallen, too sinful, too rebellious against God, to hostile toward God, for that.
We are saved only by God’s grace – His unearned, undeserved favor and our faith-response to His grace.
We are saved when we understand who Yeshua is and what He did for us.
We are saved when we understand that Yeshua is the Son of God; that He left Heaven and through the incarnation became a man, lived a holy life, died a special death to atone for our sins and enable us to be reconciled to God, was raised from the dead and is alive now at the right hand of God – full of grace and life and love and power.
We are saved when we know these truths and make a commitment to follow and obey this living Lord and Savior.
Being saved by our faith is connected to the giving of the Holy Spirit. When we are saved by faith, the Spirit of God is given to us. He transforms us. He gives us a new, godly nature that is compatible with God, a new nature that loves God and wants to serve God. The Holy Spirit takes up residence in us. He dwells in us. He lives in us.
The Word of God also teaches us that God’s grace and our faith response – not human effort, good deeds, law-keeping, Torah-observance – is not only the way we are saved but is the way we are to continue to live. The way we start our life with God is the way we continue to live for God. We are saved by faith. Then we live by faith – by having faith in God, trusting God, believing in God.
We live by faith every day, every hour, moment by moment.
It was when Peter was looking at Yeshua, that he was able to walk on the water. That’s moment by moment faith. It was when Peter took his eyes off Yeshua that he started to sink under the water.
When we live by faith, the Spirit lives in us and fills us. We are close to God, alive to Him, aware of Him.
When we live by faith and the Spirit of Yeshua fills us, we become like Yeshua.
We love what Yeshua loves and reject what He rejects.
When we live by faith and the Spirit is filling us, we understand what the will of God is for us and we are able live according to God’s will.
When we live by faith and the Spirit is filling us, we are able to turn away from sin and evil.
We are able to live righteous, God-honoring lives.
Good living, right living, holy living, God-honoring living comes from living by faith and the Holy Spirit filling us. This is a radically different way of living for God than trying to live by human effort, Torah-observance or keeping commandments.
Christianity is not focused on keeping laws. Otherwise it would be called “Lawianity”. Legalism focuses on laws, actions, works, disciplines, practices, commandments: “Do this, don’t do that. Eat this, don’t eat that. Don’t touch that. Don’t wear that. Look and this but don’t look at that. Observe the Sabbath, not Sunday; observe this holiday, not that holiday”.
These things have the appearance of right living but they lack the power to produce right living. They can’t make us holy. They can’t help us overcome evil. They can’t transform us into the likeness of Yeshua. They can’t help us live for God the way we need to.
Christianity focuses on Christ and His sufficiency for salvation and His sufficiency for right living.
Why? Because in Messiah, we are complete. United to Yeshua because of our faith, we lack nothing. We don’t need anything else to be complete. The Son of God, living in us and through His Spirit, is our sufficiency.
Adding anything to His sufficiency, like keeping laws, takes away from His sufficiency. Adding anything to His sufficiency doesn’t add any spiritual benefit. It takes away spiritual benefit.
Yeshua Himself, the living Lord and Savior, must be the center of our religious life. We must fix our eyes on Him. He must be living in us and filling us by His Spirit – day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment.
The Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink – laws, actions, works, disciplines, practices, commandments – but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Living by faith and the Spirit filling us is the right way to live for God. It enables us to live a life of goodness and experience peace and joy.
Right living, successful living -followed by eternal life – it’s so simple. Rabbi Paul summed it up in these six words: Messiah in you, the hope of glory.
So, What Does Living For God Looks Like?
Of course, it looks like Yeshua. He perfectly lived for God – all the time, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment.
Living for God looks like the two greatest commandments: Loving God with all our heart, soul and might. and loving our neighbor. And the two commandments are connected. We can’t love God if we don’t love our neighbor.
Here’s why: It’s easy to say, “I’m a believer. I love God.” However, talk is cheap. God lives in His people on Earth. We are His temple. He lives in the people of Messiah’s Community.
The truth is we don’t love God, who we don’t see, if we don’t love the people He lives in, who we do see.
Loving God means more than reading the Bible on your own, and praying, and occasionally coming to a worship service.
Loving God means being an involved member of a local community of Yeshua-followers with God-ordained leaders.
It means coming regularly to the gathering of the community.
It means being connected to the leaders of the community so that they know you and are able to speak into your life, teaching you and correcting you when you go in a bad direction.
It means knowing your brothers and sisters and serving them in some way with the gifts God has given to you.
You can’t love and serve your brothers and sisters without knowing them.
Practical Things To Do
We need to be filled with the Spirit of God. How do we do that?
We simply ask God to fill us with His Spirit. If we seek we will find. If we knock, the door will be opened for us.
Let’s learn from the earliest followers of Messiah, who were led by the Lord’s special disciples. They shared everything they had. They worshiped together every day. They ate meals together in each others homes.
We can’t meet each day – but we can be hospitable. We can practice hospitality.
When we meet on Shabbat or holidays, we can get here early, stay late, talk to people, encourage them, pray for them.
We can call someone during the week, talk to them and pray with them over the phone: men with men, women with women.
We can invite someone out to lunch or dinner. We can invite someone to our home for lunch or dinner.
We can stay for the Onegs. We can sit next to someone we don’t know and get to know him or her.
We have about 200 people who are involved with us. About 150 come in person at this time. Try to get to know half of them. That’s 75 people.
We can pray for everyone who is part of Shema every day – that God would bless them, fill them with the Spirit, help them live with God, walk with God, be alive to God and dead to sin; more heavenly minded and less earthly minded, more passionate about God, proclaiming the Good News and building up Messiah’s Community.
Let’s pray:
Heavenly Father, help us be saved by faith and then live by faith – every day, every hour, moment by moment.
We know that good living, right living, successful life, comes from a close personal relationship with You, the living God.
Help us have that relationship with You. Fill us with Your Spirit and enable us to live in the Spirit.
May Yeshua, Your Son, continually be our source, our sufficiency, our completeness, our life, our all in all.
May we constantly fix the eyes of faith on Him.
Thank You for the glorious freedom we have because we know that our completeness comes from our union with Your Son and not from following laws and commandments.
We pray for those caught up in legalism and the external trappings of religion. Help them understand the truth and live the way You want them to live – by faith and by filled by Your Spirit.