Jesus’ Billboard
Today I want to challenge you. I want to you to sit down and do some introspective work on the walking billboard you call your life in Christ. What are you advertising to the unsaved? What fruit have you bore to show off the Glory of the Living God? What areas are you nailing it, and what areas are you failing it?
If you call yourself a Christian, your walk, your talk, and your life should look drastically different from your unsaved neighbor. It should be attractive, loving, kind, and merciful. It should be full of wisdom and truth, with a ready word for any situation. Blessing and graciousness should be your default; Giving should be your currency; Stable is your foundation.
Your life should be overflowing in faith and power.
But what if all that isn’t the truth your spitting?
What if your walk looks emotionally fragile and unstable? What if your talk is bound up in financial burden and a poverty mindset? Maybe your career is draining and overwhelming, or maybe you can’t keep a consistent job. How about your family life - dry, cold, and full of bitterness? Perhaps the words teachable, moldable, or correctable make you rise up in pride ready to fight?
Let me give you a clue: You’re doing it wrong.
^^^ That walk described up there is an advertisement on par with the world, and it’s exactly what Jesus came to set us free from. He’s called us to an entirely different level of lifestyle. Period. No exception. And He gives us the Holy Spirit, His Word, a community of believers, and plenty of grace to leave behind your worldly lifestyle and mindsets.
His word says in Ephesians 3:6, And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus.
It also says in 2 Peter 1:4, By these He has given us very great and precious promises so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.
And the greatest part? Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.” This lifestyle of freedom filled with the promises of great blessing is supposed to be carried out with little heaviness attached to it.
So how do we get from A to B? Loveless to loving? Broken to healed? Bound to free? Prideful to humble?
It’s simple: Faith.
Raise your expectations of who God is. If you say you believe the Word of God, all of it, you’re already making a great stretching move of your faith. I mean, let’s be real, some of the OT stories seem insane. If you can believe Jonah hung out in a fish and Noah built an arc for all the animals, making a commitment to live out His words of freedom in the NT should be easy! It might take a few more practical steps to recreate mental and physical habits, but, tap into your faith and start stretching that muscle!
Believe that His nature is within you, as stated in the above verses. Believe He provides the riches and resources of faith, provision, wisdom, etc., that is needed to walk out His promises. Period. Seriously. Make the leap!
Colossians 1:26-27 says, “... that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His Saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.“
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Let me repeat that again: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
How can a believer be a walking billboard of Jesus Christ, in them, if they profess a consistent trapping of their natural circumstances Jesus says you’re free from?
Easily put, you can’t be. You aren’t. And it’s staining His image.
Your fruit, your lifestyle, your profession must remain consistent with the Word of God.
And guess what, God says it’s totally possible. You can totally do it. You can change the things you identify as inconsistent, today. Through the tools Jesus provides - His Holy Spirit, the Word of God, a community of believers who not only hold you accountable, but challenge your walk, etc. - you can change the image you bear.
You can be the individual Christ calls you to be. Your life can bring the One True King glory day in, and day out.
Consider yourself challenged.
