Today marks the first sermon in another new 3 part journey I am on; Lordship! Much like the Importance of Prayer blogs, this will be 3 blogs each covering what I took away from the sermons through the church’s outline and my own notes. I like to pass along the messages!
Today was about evaluating Lordship in our life. What is Lordship? Lordship is putting God first in our lives.
There were two issues we talked about; The Position Issue and The Permission Issue. The Position Issue is who or what holds the number one position in our life? Who or what will be number one in our life? Everybody serves somebody or something…The Lord, The World, Self etc. There is one thing in our lives which will constantly challenge the position issue; Pride. Pride has always affected relationships with God from the very beginning and it hinders us and our relationship with Him. Lucifer, once an angel, was essentially what we would categorize as a worship leader in Heaven; similar to say a choir director. Lucifer had too much pride in his life and he didn’t want God to be number one, he wanted to be number one, he wanted to be GREATER than God. Then we know he was cast out of Heaven and became who we refer to as Satan. We also know Lucifer (Satan) made an appearance as a serpent in the Garden of Eden where he tempted Adam and Eve. He tempted their pride in telling them if they ate the forbidden fruit, they would be like God. One issue with many of us is we always want to be number one. There are many situations in the Bible where pride and challenge of the position issue comes up. The disciples themselves struggled with the position issue! They even argued over who was the greatest among them. They let pride and position take place over Lordship. In John 13:3-5 Jesus Himself washed the disciples feet. Why would Jesus, the Son of God, wash the feet of each disciple? Did He just want to? No. He wanted to demonstrate to each of them what true Lordship looked like. He wanted them to resolve and settle the position issue in their lives. Jesus knew He was from God, He had no insecurity about who He was. He knew He had all authority but He chose to humble Himself and He submitted to His Father’s will to serve!
Let the greatest among you be a servant of all; He was demonstrating the power of God! It is much easier for us to serve when we resolve the position issue in our lives and submit to the will of God.
The other issue that was covered today was The Permission Issue. We want to know who has the right to ask for our time, talents, resources etc. There is a prevailing “me first” mentality that exists with many Christians today. They believe God is there just to make us happy and feel good every day. They see Him as their savior but not as their Lord. He has saved them, yet they’re not giving Him the number one position in their lives. In many cases we want or expect HIM to follow US. We expect Him to submit to our will and not the other way around! God is the Lord of all the living and dead; so whether dead or alive, He should be number one in our lives 😉 Many of us give excuses rather than permission.
We all know life is not easy; anything worth doing will present a challenge and call for effort on our part. Many of us just make excuses for why we can’t do what we are called to do and in turn we are making our excuses more important than following God.
Jesus always looks at the heart; He knows our true intentions. With that knowledge alone, we should be re-evaluating the motives of our heart. We can’t have things both ways…it’s either for God or for ourselves. Not everyone who professes Lordship embraces or lives Lordship. As with many things in life, it seems to be a lot easier for us to talk it than to walk it! True Lordship is embracing His will regardless of the inconvenience or discomfort; those will always be present! We must remain faithful and still place God in the number one spot in our lives. It’s embracing the future regardless of our past! We all have a past and for almost all of us, our pasts aren’t the greatest times of our lives. Our pasts are almost always full of things we wish to forget and things we are ashamed of, but the good thing is we must turn loose of our pasts and follow where He leads us! We should be moving forward with Jesus no matter the cost! There will always be a cost and often that cost is our own pride! Pride is the mother of all sin…you can see its roots in every sin. Pride is also usually something everyone around us knows we have, yet we don’t know we have! We have to recognize pride in our lives and deal with it because it will always challenge the position issue, therefore causing God not to be able to be number one in our lives. Lordship should be making Jesus the center of our lives. We naturally think of ourselves and our own wants and needs, but if we first seek the kingdom of God, He will provide all we need and we will be filled with true happiness and contentment because He makes us whole!
I pray all of us today will take a step back and examine God’s role in our lives and the position we permit Him to have. Are there other people or things taking His place as number one? How much time do we devote to Him in comparison to these other people or things? Asking these questions will make it easier to identify a position issue and hopefully help us resolve them. I also pray that we all look for evidence of pride in our lives and recognize it as an issue. We must rid ourselves of pride because it is deeply rooted in sin and usually when pride is in our lives, God will never be at the center of our lives where He should be.
As always, thank you for taking time out to read my blog posts! I hope that God blessed your lives today and every day!
Much Love and God Bless 💚
Still Standing 