Living Letters: Reflecting Christ's Transformative Power
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"So it's a mandate that's given to all of us to make disciples. Now, I want to read to you 2 Corinthians 3, verse 7 to 8. And it says this, But if the ministry of death in letters engraved on stones came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently on the face of Moses because of the glory of his face fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to even be with more glory? I mean, what a statement. He's comparing Old Testament glory, New Testament glory, saying it's much greater. It's amazing." [00:01:17] (43 seconds)
"And that people look at us, they should be seeing something. And so in 2 Corinthians 3, 18, it says, but we all with unveiled faith, not like Moses, where we were veiled, where he was veiled, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord. So you wake up in the morning, you get out of bed and you look in the mirror and you think, dear Jesus, why have you forsaken me? When in actual fact, you're looking in a mirror at the glory of God, because we're being transformed from glory, to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit." [00:03:20] (41 seconds)
"He's taking us from being a little egg and he's causing us to eat a milk plant called the word of God and the Holy Spirit. And he's transforming us into something that we were not. It's for me, it's one of the most amazing and yet challenging concepts in the Bible. Jesus is making you like him. He's making me like him. And Jesus is reforming you and I. And that to me is absolutely remarkable." [00:05:00] (39 seconds)
"It's one of the challenging scriptures in the New Testament where he says, You are our letters, written in our hearts, have known and read by all men, being manifest that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on the tablets of human hearts. I find that one of the most challenging and uncomfortable passages in the Bible. I am your email. Right?" [00:06:05] (44 seconds)
"I'm going to have to have them read my life and they're going to make decisions did you know this that people will make decisions as to their whether they will follow Jesus Christ or not on the email of your life now that is unbelievably difficult and Paul spoke about this a little bit further on um and the um in that let me talk about it for a moment let me say this see what I discovered was there are some things that were permissible and allowable but as God worked on my life all of a sudden things that were five years ago or 10 years ago permissible and allowable I couldn't do anymore now that's been a real pain in the neck because I just didn't like that process the fact that well what's the matter I can say what I like I can do what I like yeah actually you can't because you're an email being read by other people and suddenly I found I had to change some of the ways I spoke hey and and Paul spoke about this in 2nd Corinthians chapter 10 verse 23 to 24 when he says all things are lawful right I could in other words Brent Douglas you can do what you like but not all things are profitable all things are lawful but not everything that you do Brent edifies people let no one seek his own good but that of his neighbor in other words I have to be accountable for how my life impacts other people and I have to be accountable for how my life impacts people" [00:08:06] (122 seconds)
"In other words, this is just so clear that if my behavior is causing another person to stumble in their faith, then who's responsible to deal with it? Me. I've got to stop that behavior. And of course, the problem is, uh, uh, my life mustn't hinder the quality of the Christian life of other people. and the problem is the older I get, the more serious this becomes because I'm finding the older I get and the more influence I have, the more I've got to behave myself, the more I've got to change, the more I've got to be more like Christ." [00:11:33] (56 seconds)
"Now, we don't talk about this stuff much, but this is really important because actually what he's saying is that if someone offends you, you've got to operate biblically. And if you offend somebody, you've got to operate biblically. You leave your gift at the altar, go and see, I believe I've offended you, and I ask you to forgive me. I mean, that's called biblical behavior. And when people see you operating in that way, they say, wow. They're handling this differently." [00:15:09] (32 seconds)
"See, that's hopeless. What a horrible life to live. I just think, hey, let's live a life free from all this stuff. Let's be so free that we're an email that people can read. And there's no bitterness. There's nothing defiling us. There's nothing defiling other people. So we come back to this passage that I read a week ago and talked about. And he said this in Psalm 13. He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water." [00:26:00] (35 seconds)
"We've got to make a decision. If we're going to be emails, people that can be read, people who are not ashamed of stuff, people who are not hiding secrets, people who have refused to allow bitterness and anger and resentment to come in like a seed into your life, we've got to plant ourselves by the rivers of living water and let our roots reach down. And whenever there's water nearby, the roots are always going to go toward the river." [00:26:21] (38 seconds)
"And people think, well, I've got to make disciples. Oh man, it's hard work. No, you don't. Just be a letter read of all men. Just be an email. Get your life planted by the rivers of living water. And in the process, we are filtering out everything that would try and come to pollute, the water that's coming into my life." [00:26:56] (27 seconds)
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