Message topic: Who is in control of your life?
Scripture text: Galatians 2: 15-21
Our topic for sharing today, is a word that is common in our every day conversations, but it has a wide range of issues to which it can be associated, such as in charge or in control of this operation.
Lets think of a simple way to deal with the word control: it is a common saying that a father or a husband is in control of his household which includes all who looks to him for directions, what to do, when and how.
The New Testament uses the phrase child of God or children of God several times. (1st. John 3:10) explains what it means to be a child of God: This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God, nor is anyone who does not love their brothers and sisters including their neighbors.
John is not referring here to legalists who rigidly work to earn God’s favor (Titus 3:5) He is describing the life of someone who has truly received Jesus as Lord and Savior. The life of a child of God, will be radically different from the life of an unbeliever. A child of God has a desire to live in a way that pleases the heavenly Father (1st. Corinthians 10:31) a life characterized by love.
Many people wrongly believe that everyone is a child of God. Since human beings are made in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1: 27) aren’t we all His children?
The Bible says no. Every human being is designed by God and loved by Him, but we can only become His children when we are adopted by Him, (Ephesians 1:5, and Romans 8:15) because of our sin, we live under the tyranny of Satan, the god of this world(2 Corinthians 4:4). We are enslaved by sin and live to follow its dictates (john 8:34, Romans 6: 16).
Sin drenched humanity cannot enter the presence of a Holy God. Our sin must be forgiven and our natures restored before we can have fellowship with the One we have offended (Psalm51:7)
Second Corinthians 5:17 describer what happens when we are born again into the family of God through faith in Jesus: therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.
Jesus taught that becoming children of God means we must experience the new birth (john 3:3) to be a child of God means our old sin nature is replaced with a nature that wants to please the Lord. We still sin (John 1: 8) but we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous (1st. John 2:1) being a child of God means our sins are paid for and our fellowship with God has been restored.
We have to seek power from God our heavenly father if we are to have a victorious life. The Christian life is one of warfare against sin and Satan, a war in which we are to overcome just as Jesus overcame. He overcame sin by obedient to His Father’s voice throughout His life, and then He won His final victory over Satan when He was crucified on Calvary’s cross.
We need to personally come to faith in these verses: I have been crucified with Christ: it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20) knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves of sin. (Romans 6:6)
In this way, the Holy Spirit gives us power to follow in Jesus footsteps: we lose our own life and gain His life in return. This power we are to seek so we can be victorious, this power Jesus promised the disciples before He ascended to heaven. this power is available today for all who seek to be free from themselves and to live wholly to please the Lord.
When we surrender our will to God and is born again, we are no longer under the influence of Satan who commands us to do his bidden, we are now sons and daughters of the most- high, who is able to protect us from the influence of the evil one as He takes control of our lives.
The first man was made in God’s image and likeness, but when he disobeyed the command given to him by the evil one, he became a wicked sinner and needed to be redeemed by God through His great love for mankind.
Through God’s love for mankind who is now a wicked sinner, He gave these words to His prophet Isaiah for mankind as to what he must do so as to regain his fellowship with the love of God, which is recorded for us in Isaiah 55: 7- 9.
Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God is our heavenly father, a father who only wants for His children, and wants to develop a personal relationship with each of His children: He wants to develop a personal relational relationship with each of His children.
(Romans 5: 8-9) tells us that God love us so much that He commended His love towards us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us so that we can be restore to the place God intended for us from the beginning, so we are redeemed.
Right from the beginning God’s love has reached, and from the beginning man has refused to understand. but love went on reaching, offering itself. Love offered the eternal we wanted the immediate.
Love offered deep joy, we wanted thrills, love offered freedom, we wanted license, love offered communion with God Himself, we wanted to worship at the shrine of our own minds. Love offered peace, we wanted approval for our wars. Even yet, love went on reaching, and still today, after two thousand years, patiently, lovingly, Christ is reaching out to us today. Right through the chaos of our world, through the confusion of our minds. He is reaching longing to share with us the very being of God.
There are two great powers in this world: the power of light, and the power of darkness: the power of good and the power of evil, and you and I must surrender to one or the other.
Joshua the second leader of the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land, gave the people a challenge when they were not following the ways of the Lord:
Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the god’s which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt: and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
That challenge is ours today: are we going the path that the evil one who is known as the great deceiver that is today leading mankind away from the truth of God? Or, are we going to follow the one who came to redeemed mankind back into the fellowship which he once had with God in the beginning?
The question which we have to answer is, who is in control of my life, Christ the only one who is the truth and the way of mankind back to the heavenly father kingdom, or the great deceiver? Who is in control of your life?