John 14:23-24 “Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” This episode talks about what happens when we do what the Lord tells us to do and what happens when we don't. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A Home with Our Lord and Jesus
John 14:23-24 “Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”
I thought this scripture verse was appropriate today because on Tuesday nights I am helping to run a Life in the Spirit Seminar. This is a 7 week course on how to live a Life with the Holy Spirit. How to invite the Holy Spirit into your daily life, and live more fully in Him. Each week there is a talk on a different subject. This week the talk was on Salvation. This is not something that people like to think about. We like to do whatever we want to do and we don’t really like someone telling us what we should do. We don’t really want someone telling us what is right and wrong. We figure we are grown ups and we can make our up our own minds what is right and wrong.
The problem with this is that we don’t always make the right choices. Also, we don’t always use the best logic to come up with our decisions. Sometimes we aren’t using any logic at all, we are just doing what feels good in the moment. Do you think it would be a good idea to let our children decide what is right and wrong on their own? Without any teaching or modeling, we just let them make all the decisions about what they are going to do. Do you see any problems with this? I do. They don’t have enough experience with life to decide what is best for them. For instance, if we let kids decide what to eat for every meal it would be candy and soda. If we let them decide if they wanted to brush their teeth and shower, it would be a no. However, these things are not good for them. All of their teeth will fall out if they only eat candy, drink soda, and don’t brush. The need guidance and sometimes, often times, they need us to make the hard decisions for them.
We could argue that the reason we need to guide them and tell them what to do when they are younger is because their brains are not finished developing yet or because they don’t have the life experience to know better yet. However, we are adults and so we can make our own decisions because our brains are fully developed and because we have life experiences, and the guidance of our elders to help us learn. However, we still don’t always make the right choices. I bet if you take even just one minute you can think of a time when you or another adult you know, spouse, sibling, friend or coworker has made a truly terrible decision. One that you knew, the second they told you, that it was a bad idea and it wasn’t going to end how they though it would. Yet, they are an adult and they get to make that bad choice and you just sit on the sidelines and watch. Isn’t that so hard to do? Doesn’t it just stink when we know someone is doing something that is going to end up hurting themselves and there is nothing we can do about it. Can you think of a situation where this has happened to you? When someone you loved was headed for a disaster and there wasn’t anything you could do about it?
Now let’s take a moment and think about how God must feel. There are 7.9 billion people on this planet. Can you imagine having that many children to look after? Can you imagine watching each one of them making decisions on their own and then you have to watch the fallout? God loves us more than we can even imagine. More than we could even love our own children. He loves us with a perfect love. If it hurts us to watch a loved one make a terrible choice to head down a wrong path, think about how many times that pain must be multiplied for God. It would be so much easier if God just took away our free will and we just all followed Him and loved Him because we had to, there was no choice. The problem is, if you do not have a choice, then it is not real love. So, even though it is hard, and we probably break His heart a million times a day, God gives us free will. We get to make the choices that we think are right for our family. Here’s the catch, just as it is with our kids, we also have to deal with the consequences of our choices.
Do you know how terrible you feel when you have to give your child a consequence for a bad choice them made. Or, when you have to watch them deal with a natural consequence for their choice. I know they learn from these consequences and it is better for them in the long run, but it breaks my heart to see them upset. I bet God feels the same way. Can you imagine what it must feel like to have your children completely turn their backs on you? Can you imagine what it would feel like for you to give them everything and for them to hate you, condemn you, and not even know you. This is a reality for God every day. Of the 7.9 billion people on this planet, only 2.5 are Christian. That means that less than a third of His children recognize Him. That has to be hard to see everyday.
The verse above says, “Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” Jesus is telling us that if we love Him we will obey His teachings. Also He is saying that if we do this His Father will love us and Jesus and His Father will come to us and make their home with us. How amazing does that sound? How great would it be to share a home with the Lord our God and Jesus? It doesn’t say He will build us a house, it doesn’t say we can hang out. It says They will build their home with us. What would you give to live at home with God and Jesus? What would you do?
Some people think that the Catholic Church has a lot of rules. Maybe this is true, but the rules are there for our own good. You know how sometimes when we set rules for our children, like it is not good for you to watch too much TV. Our kids don’t understand. They think we are just being mean or over bearing. However, we know that too much TV is not good for our kids. This is similar to the rules that God sets for us. We may not understand how He is protecting us from ourselves. We may not understand the purpose of the rules, and yet just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean they aren’t good rules. Our heavenly Father knows a lot more than we do. He has been watching humanity since the beginning of time. He knows what we will do before we even do it and so He knows what guidelines to put in place to try and keep us on the straight and narrow.
Think about how long we are in this life for. Let’s say we live a long healthy life, we are here for about 100 years. Then what? Then we live for an eternity in the afterlife. Isn’t it worth a little struggle, a little sacrifice now, so that we can live eternally in the presence of our Lord and Savior. Whether we like it or not, God does give us commandments to live by. He gives us rules and guidelines to follow. He tells us everything we need to do to get into Heaven. Are we listening to what He is saying? Are we following His commands? Are we aware that we need to do this? I have always been someone that responds better to a reward. I hear that the Lord will love me and build His home with me if I follow His commands and I instantly want to know what I need to do to make that happen.
Some people respond better to consequences. They strive to do what they need to do to avoid something bad happening. If this is you, let me just take a moment to remind you of what happens if we don’t follow the Lord’s commands. If we do what we want, and decide that it is our life and God can’t tell us what to do, and we don’t follow His commands, then maybe we get everything we want in this world. Maybe we have a truly fun filled, live by seat of our pants life where we get to do everything we want to do. However, what about when we leave this world? What then? If we spend our life telling God we don’t want to do what He wants us to do, or if we are too busy for God in this Life, what comes next? How will we spend our eternity? I think you all know the answer to that question. It is not something we like to think about, but it is a fact. It is something that God talks about in the Bible. It is a consequence that He has warned us about and yet many of us not paying attention. I have included in the show notes a link to the video I watched on Salvation by Ralph Martin. Video on Salvation (CLICK HERE) It is really good and I highly recommend for everyone to watch it. It really gets you thinking about what is important in this world. Do we want to end up spending eternity living in a home with the Lord and Jesus? If so, all we need to do is follow His commands.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to make the right choices in our lives. Help us to choose you and life everlasting with you. Lord, we know that sin leads us to death and we don’t want that. We want you to love us and build your home with us. Lord, we know we need your help. We know we all do things that you do not like. We hold on to past resentments, we refuse to forgive, we don’t treat others like we would want to be treated, and many other things. Help change our hearts, help give us the will power, grace and strength to do the right thing. Lord we love you! You are truly amazing and we are so very thankful for all you do for us. We are grateful for the patience you have for us as I know it is probably very frustrating how many times we mess up. Help us to mess up less Lord. Help us to keep our eyes on you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Video on Salvation (CLICK HERE)