Baptized Into Freedom: Living the Emancipated Life

Because as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. Every action is preceded by a thought. If we think different, we act different. If we act different, we become different. And the truth of the matter is, then that begins to finally bring it full circle because you are different. You are holy. Hebrews chapter 10 says, having been perfected once and for all by ones that you've already perfect. This isn't about performing your way to the next stage. It's about living. It's not about good boy, bad boy. It's about death and life. And do you want life? Bingo. Start thinking about those things. See how much life changes. Father, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We love you. [01:17:24] (59 seconds)  #MindsetMatters

This is about living. Sanctification is not about a moral code. Sanctification is not about following new ethics, although that will be the output. Sanctification is understanding the declaration of God over your life, that you're both righteous and free. You're righteous and free. Now here's the opportunity. Do you wanna live like that? You must be willing to participate. This is where Christianity becomes a partnership with God. Okay? Paul continues now, since we died with Christ, we believe that we also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again, death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. [00:53:05] (52 seconds)  #LiveRighteousAndFree

Jesus says in John 15, if you abide in me and I abide in you, you will bear much fruit, but apart from me, you can do nothing. The key to productivity is connectivity. All I gotta do is stay connected to Christ, and we'll look at a moment how you do that. But like, you and I, if you plant an orange tree, you don't produce the oranges. It it happens through the goodness and the greatness of God's creation. The same thing is true with the fruit of the spirit. Plant your life in the spirit, you will naturally produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control. You will. [01:07:38] (38 seconds)  #AbideAndBearFruit

there's an entire state full of slaves that have been declared free, but nobody told them. And so they continued to live as slaves because nobody told them they were free. It's insane when you think about it. Well, in Romans chapter six, that is the motivation of Paul. There were so many in the Roman call in the in the Roman nation, in the city of Rome, Jew and Gentile alike, who had no idea what this declaration of justification meant in Romans chapter five. [00:39:44] (33 seconds)  #YouveBeenDeclaredFree

That's what God wants. God anybody who tells you Jesus wants you to die for him is wrong. He wants you to live for him. Offer yourselves to God as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to the Lord. This is your reasonable act of worship. Then you will know the pure, perfect, and pleasing will of God for your life. Have you ever wondered what God's will is? I can tell you how you figure that out. Offer yourself to him. When you offer yourself to him as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to the Lord, you'll be able to discern and figure out what the pure, perfect, and pleasing will of God is for your life. [00:56:31] (30 seconds)  #ChristPaidItAll

You don't have to be ruled by. It resides, it remains, but it doesn't have to rule in your life any longer. You literally have the authority to determine whether or not you're going to participate in the deeds of the flesh. So we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Alright? So point one is we must be determined to put sin to death. You gotta put you gotta have the funeral, the sin nature, and the sin choices because they do become habitual patterns. And you you can break those. You you've got to replace them, but you can do it so that we can develop the gift of life. [00:52:19] (46 seconds)  #TwoPathsChooseLife

The whole Bible, we talk about this so much, is based on a simple premise, either or. There's only two options in all of human history. There is not a third. It's either the tree of life or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree you choose from dictates and determines your outcome. They ate from the wrong tree, therefore they died. So they stepped into the new realm, only two options, death and life. Then Israel refused to obey that, so they stepped into the new realm, blessings and curses. They refused to identify that, so we have in the Bible now wise and full. Just keep on going. Heaven, hell, narrow, wide. There's only two options, flesh, spirit. [01:02:01] (44 seconds)  #ClaimYourTerritory

This is about life. This is about living. We will continue to say this over and over and over that Jesus did not come to make bad people good, he came to give dead people life. This is about life. It's not about lists. It's not about legalism. Okay? This is about discovering what it really means to be alive. Okay? In the same way, count yourself dead to sin. You're dead to that. You know, amazingly, until the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil war, the greatest cause of freedom for a slave in America was death. They're finally free. They never knew freedom. They had to die their way out of it. [00:53:57] (48 seconds)  #NoCondemnationInChrist

Not, oh, well, I just come from a dysfunctional family and this you're just feeding the flesh. No. You don't under I do understand. You've been set free from that. You're making a choice to be enslaved by something you've been set free from. Quit lying to yourself. Own it at least. I'm doing what I do because this is what we've always done, and you're gonna still get what you've always got. And if you don't wanna stop getting what you've always got, you gotta stop doing what you've always done. Well, you don't understand. I understand freedom and slavery. That's what I understand. That's all I know. And am I free of everything? No. My Lord, you don't know me well enough. So but you only have two choices, flesh or spirit. Who's leading? [01:02:45] (46 seconds)  #AliveInChrist

In other words, you've already been raised from the dead. Your spirit is now alive. You and I are back once saved, back in similarity to where Adam and Eve once were, and that they were able to have an intimate connection with God because they had a spirit, and God could walk with them in the cool of the day. You and I have it even better because we have the spirit within us. He walks with us at all times. You have a sub substantively new life. It's completely different than the old one, but you gotta be willing to live that new life. For we know, we know our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with. [00:51:37] (42 seconds)  #StandingThenStandard

And what's beautiful about the tree of the spirit is God knows what season needs what fruit. So there are seasons in your life when you really just need some self control. You need to take the bit in your mouth and let the spirit of God kinda slow you down and direct your life. At other times, what you really just need is some patience. And we often get patience confused with perseverance. We talked about perseverance last week, the willingness to do whatever you've gotta do for as long as you have to do it until God does what only he can do. And that produces character, and character produces hope, and that hope will never put us to shame. Patience is the ability to put up with difficult people. [01:08:17] (45 seconds)  #GraceIsNotLicense

Like, aren't you sick in time sick and tired of looking all at all the one dimensional lives on Facebook and comparing your three-dimensional life to it? Because if you knew their whole story, you knew the other two dimensions, you wouldn't want what they have. If I asked everybody in this room to put all their troubles in a brown bag and put them up here on the stage, and then I went through and read them out, I guarantee you this one thing, you're walking out with yours. Like, I don't want his. I don't woo hoo. I'm good. Right? You know, it takes three-dimensional living to to defeat jealousy, to make sure that you have I mean, good gracious, how much of our lives are driven by this and all these things to sit here. Do you I mean, you really want that? Or would you like that? You want that? You wanna still be a slave? [01:10:27] (52 seconds)  #FreedomFromSin

And Paul is trying to obviously, we're thousands years after that, but think about that concept. How did you find your freedom? You died your way out of it. When did you die? When you confessed Christ and you got baptized. You're saved immediately. Right? The indwelling spirit, but the spirit has to begin to inhabit you. This is when you start turning yourself over to him. Alright? You already have him. Well, how much of him do you want? How many areas of your life do you want changed? How much freedom do you wanna live life? Because you gotta count yourself dead to sin, but alive in God and in Christ Jesus. Therefore, don't let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. [00:54:46] (41 seconds)  #FaithAndGraceGift

Give him more and more opportunities to demonstrate the greatness of his grace. So I'm gonna go give God all the opportunity he needs to demonstrate his grace. Right? It's it's just it's it sounds right, but it's not right. Paul says, by no means. We are those who have died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know? All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. That is more than water just as much as bread and juice are more than the elements. It's a sacrament. That word means mystery. [00:46:49] (39 seconds)  #WhoAreYouServing

that that faith is a gift from God as well. It isn't just the grace as a gift, but faith is a gift as well. And salvation is first fully and always will be a work of God. We cannot provide anything to it to increase it, make access to it. All you can do is believe and receive. This week, we start to turn the corner. This week, we're gonna talk about that there is a holy alliance, a holy partnership in the life of a follower of Christ who's been born again and redeemed and indwelled, and with God Almighty primarily through the Holy Spirit. [00:35:12] (36 seconds)  #ChooseKindness

The rest of your life can be the best of your life. If you begin to understand it's about life. Life. In the name of Jesus Christ, the bible commands you, go live freely, freely. Father, we know what set us free. Beyond civil war battled on a cross won by Christ. May we go live because he so painfully died. It's in his name we pray, and all of God's people said, amen. Alright. Let's give God a hand clap of praise in his house today. [01:19:01] (44 seconds)

And so what we have to do is ask ourselves, what are we offering ourselves to? That's the beginning question of sanctification. Who's your master? Is it you? Are you able to say, alright, you know, thirty minutes, I gotta check out what's going on in the world and all my friends and put it down and then do something productive. Spend some time with your kids. You know, here's what's really crazy is there's a percentage of you instead of volunteering for VBS will be home looking at Instagram for the same amount of time that we have the kids. You'll be binge watching some Yellowstone or something like that. You know, you just be, oh, I gotta see it. It it's on your DVR, man. It ain't going nowhere. [00:58:09] (50 seconds)

people become very difficult when you and I are in very difficult circumstances. And it isn't because they're different, it's because we are. We're getting a little worn down and our patience level is beginning to fade. And the people we normally were able to put up with and all their quirks, all of a sudden, you're just annoying the fire out of me. But what's true in those moments is how much you really need them. And you're losing the very attractive fruit that draws them. So now I'm losing patience with people and they're like, I don't need to be around you right now. Right. And like some of the boats this this is Christ, you wanna know the truth, but don't you like kind people? People are just they're just kind. You know, they don't want nothing from you. They're just nice people. [01:09:12] (49 seconds)

Welcome to Crossland Community Church. We are a community of refuge and hope for all people. So glad you're here. As Alisa said, happy Mother's Day to each and every one of you. I'm gonna hold this on my knuckle for a second. I got a little bit of blood going there. Well, we're in this week, the series called, what just happened? And up to this week, we've been witnessing ultimately everything we've seen from the moment of salvation up to this week is a work of God. Okay? Even the faith that you must express [00:34:40] (28 seconds)