Word of Encouragement for Every New Day ~ 21 May 2008

Word of Encouragement for Every New Day ~ 21 May 2008

Developing our character for battle: Being an imitator of Christ. It is interesting to me how God is purposefully using this series on developing our character for battle. I say this with all honestly, because if I had it my way I would have started with boldness, courage, failure, or vision. Yet, this series started first with Let Jesus balance the imbalance. The second was on being careful of false expectations. The third was power through the name of Jesus, and today is being an imitator of Christ. 3 John 1:11 Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God. In my opinion, being an imitator of Christ is the hardest thing to achieve. Having said that though, it does not mean it is impossible. To imitate Christ it takes reading the word of God to know how to imitate him. I recommend we do that daily. However, today I will focus on three key steps which God has placed on my heart. Accept, submit, and worship Him. To imitate Christ we must accept Christ. I hope we remember that there is power in the name of JESUS. If we cannot accept Jesus Christ as our Lord, it will be very hard to see the power of God in our lives. Accepting Christ is recognizing that we are sinners, and the only way we can EVER be forgiven of our sins is accepting that Christ died for our sins. Because of what HE DID we are all set free and have ETERNAL LIFE. To imitate Christ we must submit to Christ. Let us encourage one another to submit daily to Christ. It is easy to imitate what is evil because we are sinners. To submit to Christ means we must surrender our lives to Christ. Not to our boyfriends, not to people, not to money, and not to our own selfish desires. Worship Christ. Let us worship the name of the Lord, for He is in control. For He is the reason for our existence, what He has done for you and for me, he doesn’t want our money, He wants us. It is interesting to me why people turn away from God, turn away from having a relationship with Him, just because of these two words: worship Christ. In order to understand what worshiping Christ means, we have to have a relationship with Him. Today, let us encourage one another to be imitators of Christ. The battle is ahead and who are you going to rely on? © May 2008 Shaun Lee. www.everynation.org.sg archive: www.shauntzen.blogspot.com