All is sacred.  John 8.33-36; Romans 7.15-25

Click to read:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208.33-36&version=NIV&interface=print

Key verse:  So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8.36

Good Day!  The discussion continues between Jesus and the Jewish leaders in the Temple Courts, where Jewish law and tradition have been hammered out for years.  “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin,” Jesus tells them. 

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that, as much as you try, as good as you think you are, however much you have changed, you will never be able to escape sin, as long as you are in your body?  Sin separates us from God, and has the power to enslave as well.  Yet . . . in Jesus, we are set free.

The world’s second best teacher discussed his own struggle, which is your struggle and mine. Paul wrote, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. Yet . . .Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

So, how do we live in the freedom of Jesus Christ?  Jesus has given us a picture of true discipleship in the preceding verses: believing—which is fully trusting in him, being in the Word so as to know him and obey him, and then walking in truth.  But wait!  We cannot read the Word, talk to Jesus in the morning, and then leave him there … we must see our lives as all one piece.  We are not just spiritual in our ‘quiet times’ with God; we are spiritual the rest of the day too!  Therefore we must take Jesus into the whole fabric of our lives, seeing everything we do as part of our sacred service to him. 

The psalmist made it clear that God is present everywhere – “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.”  Wherever we go, God is present, my friends.  So everything we do is to be viewed in light of the sacred—meeting with others, settling arguments, driving our vehicles, conducting business, eating with family—all to be done to the glory of God.

Christine