It's impossible to live as a Christian...

...apart from total reliance on God's Spirit.

Today's sermon was about BE: Discerning. It's going to be somewhat difficult to clearly explain anything that happened because it was a completely illogically ordered sermon and my notes are really scrambled. To be fair though, Rob did warn us that the thinking behind the sermon wasn't linear at all. I think he did it just to mess with my OCD about note taking. But I digress...

I just wanted to share some thoughts that I got out of the sermon today.

"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good."
OR
"Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good." (The Message)

We talked a lot about objective evil and good and how important it is to have those present in your life. Evil isn't defined by what I hate nor is good defined by what I cling to. God's Word is an objective good. It is what we compare everything else to. It is God's heart, His love story, His thread of redemption running throughout humanity.

We also talked about this idea of clinging. You can't cling, read: hold onto for dear life, to God and to the world at the same time, it's not possible. In 2 Samuel 23, it talks about how Eleazar held onto his sword to defeat the Philistines to the point that his hand was frozen around the sword. "
Next to him was Eleazar son of Dodai the Ahohite. As one of the three mighty warriors, he was with David when they taunted the Philistines gathered at Pas Dammim[d] for battle. Then the Israelites retreated, 10 but Eleazar stood his ground and struck down the Philistines till his hand grew tired and froze to the sword. The LORD brought about a great victory that day. The troops returned to Eleazar, but only to strip the dead."

How crazy is that? But that is how we must act when it comes to following Jesus. We have to cling to him so tightly that are hand becomes frozen around him. And if we are clinging like that, how would we ever be able to hold onto anything else?

We also talked about how you cannot just CHOOSE to do good over evil. Let's face it, we as human beings are simply able to overcome evil by choosing not to do it. We aren't strong enough, we don't have the willpower. It is impossible for us to live as a Christian just by choosing it. We have to rely, ie. cling, to the Spirit of God to even have a shot at living the way we are supposed to. How foolish we are to think that we can do anything, even good things, on our own or of our own accord.

There were a couple other things I wrote down about being "born again" but I really don't see how it directly relates to what I just said, so I think I'll save it for another post. I can barely take the randomness of this post as it is....