Brian Hopkins – Mt Freedom Baptist Church

Success in any endeavor – be it in sports, in business, or even private life – hinges on consistency. The same is true with our lives in Christ. If we are to be effective Gospel servants and evangelists, we must consistently return to Jesus daily in prayer and in His Word – seeking His guidance for the coming day. We must also consistently simply spend quiet time with Him to allow His Spirit to recharge our commitment to discipleship and break us free from the cares and business of our lives. This is the very reason that God gave the Sabbath to mankind. He recognizes our need of Sabbath rest. Finally, we must make service to His kingdom a continual practice of reaching out to our fellow believers and those in our community at large.

When Jesus calls His disciples, He calls us to follow Him together. We must not simply accept and keep His gift of eternal salvation to ourselves. Jesus calls us to serve Him together with our brothers and sisters in Christ, reaching out with the message of His Gospel to the lost in our community. In Romans 12, Paul gives us a road map for serving together – first to build up our fellow believers, and then together reaching out to the lost all around us.

Our redemption out of sin and death by Jesus into eternal life with Him is assured from the moment we answer Jesus’ call to believe His Gospel. But this justification is just the beginning of our new relationship with our Savior as He forms us into the effective disciples He has called us to be. This process of discipleship begins with our commitment to follow and obey Him faithfully wherever He leads us, trusting that the plans He has for us are always perfect and true.

Gospel believers are led by Jesus, beginning with His call to salvation and continuing with our commitment to His discipleship, follow Him into service in our community consistently through the spiritual disciplines which He teaches us by His Word and through prayer. This process of following Jesus begins with His call to daily deny ourselves, take our crosses and follow Him.

Proverbs 27:17 likens the edification of the Body of Christ by the interaction of believers to the sharpening of iron with iron. In order for Christians to “sharpen” one another, we must not only be willing to admonish and encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ, but also be willing to allow them to “sharpen” us. This requires us to humble ourselves before our fellow believers, knowing that the sharpening process can sometimes be difficult. We must also ensure that our “sharpening” is always done and received in the Spirit of God’s love with the goal of restoring and perfecting our Christian fellowship.

n his first letter to the churches, Peter encourages believers to live lives of honor among ourselves and among the non-believers of the world. We are to honor not only our brothers and sisters in Christ, but also those in the world around us including the authorities of worldly governments. In so doing, everyone will take note and glorify God. It is important for us to remember that honoring others doesn’t always mean that we approve of their own behavior. We offer them our honor in obedience to God’s command regardless of whether we approve of their words and deeds.

In Matthew 15 Jesus teaches that we honor him by serving those whom He called “the least of these” – feeding and clothing those in need and visiting those who are suffering. Conversely, He says that when we do not help others in need, we dishonor Him. But honoring others isn’t something we should do out of a sense of duty to “check a box.” It must start with an a genuine desire to serve others born from gratitude when we remember how Jesus demonstrated His love for His children by His sacrifices on our behalf.

Christ followers understand God’s call to honor Him in the things we do, say, and think throughout every day of our lives in Christ. We are to show honor to God in our worship, by our obedience to His commands and calling, in our relationships with our fellow human beings, in everything we say, in our daily work to the glory of God, in our stewardship of the blessings God has bestowed on our lives, in living lives of holiness, in thankfulness for God’s presence and work in our lives – especially our salvation through Christ out of death in our sins into eternal life in His glorious presence, and in fulfillment by His empowerment of the mission(s) He has assigned to us.

As we celebrate Mothers’ Day this year, we begin a new message series – Called to Honor. How appropriate that we should begin this series with God’s commandment for us to – “Honor Your Father and Your Mother.” (Deuteronomy 5:16). God’s call for us to lives of honor begins with us seeing our fellow creatures as God sees us – His beloved children created in His own image. When we view those around us in this light, we are filled with the desire to honor and serve them as we do our beloved God Himself.

Jesus’ so-called “Great Commission” that we find in Matthew 28:18-20 is a familiar passage. In it Jesus commands His followers to “Go.” Jesus received the authority to give this command from His Father, and He endows His followers with His authority to carry the command out boldly and confidently. Jesus command carries with it the promise that we do not “go” alone to fulfill His command, but that He will be with us always.

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