Don’t Waste Your Life By Tim Badal

The only person who can say they're a victim and not a victimizer is not you. It's not me. It's not anybody who's endured hardships and troubles. It's Jesus. Jesus who knew no sin, became sin on our behalf that he might extend to us, the victimizers, the righteousness of God. And so Jesus is the ultimate victim. And Jesus didn't use his victimhood to create a distance between him and us. He used it to model for us that he loved us and he spoke truthfully to us and he acted justly with us, and he was merciful. [00:31:45] (40 seconds)  #JesusModelOfMercy

And right away, there were people that were saying, if you say yes to God, then what it means is that you'll be healthy and wealthy. That life will go well with you. Well, listen. That same garbage is being preached from pulpits today. That you say yes to God and life goes really, really well for you. And Paul says this, we said yes to God and you know what happened? Our lives fell apart. Our lives fell apart. [00:23:37] (28 seconds)  #FaithDoesntMeanEasy

You should be encouraged before you turn on your phone. You should be encouraged before you turn on the news. You should be encouraged before you say hello to anybody. And here's why you should be encouraged. Because God gave you rest and God gave you the ability to get up, to breathe, for your brain to function, and you to go on with another opportunity of life. A new day has dawned. A new opportunity is before you. God has graced that to me, and he's graced that to you. [00:13:35] (27 seconds)  #GraceForANewDay

I don't have time for that. I'm not interested in that. And friends, could it be this morning that one of the reasons why we're waiting on God instead of saying yes to his grace in our lives is when God notifies us, we don't have time. We're too busy. There's more important things, and we slide his notifications to the right. [00:16:07] (21 seconds)  #DontSwipeAwayGod

But what you need to know and recognize is is what Paul is communicating is when I started following Jesus, my life started to fall apart from an earthly perspective. And I needed to know and recognize that when I say yes to the Lord, it means I say yes as we sang this morning. I say yes to the good and I say yes to the bad. And in saying yes to God, it may mean some relationships suffer. It may mean your checkbook suffers. It may mean your calendar suffers. It may mean, your popularity suffers. Paul would say all of that was true. Even his own well-being would suffer. [00:26:48] (41 seconds)  #YesToGodBothGoodAndBad

And he does this kind of play on words of paradoxes, if you will, to communicate that we don't define ourselves by our circumstances. We define them through the lens of what God wants to use. And so friends, the greatest paradox in all of the scriptures, Christ became, went low. Even though he was high, he went low, and you would have thought that was bad. Well, what it turned out to be is it allowed us to be high with him. God was rich and he became poor, and you would think from an earthly perspective that's bad, but he did that so that we could become rich. [00:33:10] (37 seconds)  #ChristWentLowLiftedUsHigh

Some of us have found ourselves in this week in places, thinking, doing, behaving, being. In places and moments. The holy spirit of God says, shouldn't be there. You shouldn't be thinking about those things. You shouldn't be looking on those things. You shouldn't be meditating on that. That it's not where I want you. And God is notified. He's throwing these pop ups to us through the gift of the holy spirit, convicting us of sin. And we swipe them and say, no, I'd rather have my sin than you, God. [00:17:34] (36 seconds)  #DontSwipeAwayConviction

In a fallen world, you're one of two people. You're either a victim or you're a victimizer. And if we're really honest, we've played both parts in our lives. I know that for a lot of you, you'll take back and say, no. I who have I hurt? Well, you're a sinner. I'm a sinner. We hurt people and we don't even know it. We hurt people and we do know it and we still hurt them. And so we play this part. We're one of two people at any given time. We're a victim of someone else's wrongdoing or we are the victimizer who's harming people whether we know it or not, whether we intend to or not. [00:29:15] (37 seconds)  #VictimOrVictimizer