Life on God's Terms

This past Sunday, our Discipleship Pastor spoke on being a disciple of Christ. It's been a subject that has been preached and spoken about for a while at our church. Something clicked with me when he read Romans 8:1-11

In the Message Bible, that passage is titled, "The Solution is Life on God's Terms".

Why is it so hard to live life on God's Terms?

For me, some of it is fear, but I think a lot of it is selfishness. I like my life as it is and I don't necessarily want Him changing it. Because, you know that if you try life on God's terms, He may ask you to do something or give up something you don't want to.

I don't want to give up my freedom...my time...my money...my time...

No, that isn't a typo, I said time twice. I like being able to do things whenever I want to. Having days free...

Wait, free? Freedom? But what is true freedom? Ok, yeah, I know!! I know! *sigh*
Living life on God's terms.

Look at the passage, verses 5-11

^5-8Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.

^9-11But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

Ok, so focusing on us and what we want leads to an empty, dead life, but focusing on God brings life and freedom.

When we give up something, God will replace it with life.

We have to let go of ourselves so that our arms are open and ready to receive what God has for us.

Another way to think about God's Spirit in us.
Yesterday, as I was sitting in class thinking I'd be taking my turn making my presentation, I began to get nervous. Then, I began thinking of this passage. God's Spirit is in me. If I am being led by the Spirit and working in the Spirit, then what do I have to fear? I may not have the charisma of some of the pastors in my class, but I have the same Holy Spirit they do. He just works in different ways in my life. I have a different calling. Not called to be a pastor, but a minister to children and families. Isn't it so awesome to think how God can develop and mold each one of us into people He can use and work through?

I know this was kinda long. I mainly wrote this to work it out in my mind. I hope it made some sense.

I'm praying that I will be open to what God wants to do in my life. I feel like I'm opening little by little and so thankful that God works it all out in His time because you know it's perfect.