Offering Leftovers
The road is narrow and few will actually find it. What does that mean?
God wants our best, deserves our best and demands our best.
In our current lives how do we gauge our relationship with God?
· Do you use the Bible?
· Do you compare yourself to others?
How much room do you have in your life for God?
· Francis stated, “It’s easy to fill ourselves up with other things and then give God whatever is left.”
· Hosea 13:6 says, “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”
· What do we fill our lives up so much with that we run out of room for God? How do we set our priorities?
In Malachi’s day the priests thought their sacrifices were sufficient. They had spotless animals but chose to keep those for themselves and give their less desirable animals to God. They assumed God was pleased because they had sacrificed something. Read Malachi 1:8 on pg 91 in book.
· What are your priorities? Who and what really matters in your life? Are leftovers good enough for a holy God?
· What prompts us to love God, give to God and praise God? Is it out of Love, Obligation or Guilt?
· Later on in Malachi God is so displeased with the people uselessly using His alter that he wanted the temple gates shut. He was telling the people that NO worship is better than apathetic worship.
· Francis makes the statement, “I wonder how many church doors God wants shut today.”
God asks his people to give up what they think is necessary and valuable in their lives in exchange for what really matters. God says our greatest fear in life should not be failure but instead succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.
· We have to know what really matters in life, to God, to succeed at it. What really matters to God?
· God says he measures our lives by how we Love.
· Paul wrote that even if “I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”
· What does that mean?
· Read 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 pg 1342
· Challenge yourself by putting your name in the place of Love throughout those verses. Does it still sound as good with your name there?
“Following Christ isn’t something that can be done halfheartedly or on the side. It is not a label we can display when it is useful. It must be central to everything we do and are.”
· Francis uses the example of pursuing Christ being like swimming upstream. What happens when, going upstream, you slow down or quit swimming even if just for a moment? You begin to be swept downstream.
· If you try to swim upstream in a river you have to make a conscious decision that whatever is upstream and caused you to make that decision is well worth the risk and effort.
· Christ is standing upstream on the bank and we know he is so much more than worth the risk and effort then why are we constantly drifting back downstream?
We all know that by the Grace of God we are saved through Faith and if you have that true Faith then it will show through your actions.
· In James 2:17, James wrote that “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead”
· There are so many people today right in front of us that lack the actions revealing their true Faith in God.
Don’t raise your hands but, how many of us, here today, would really leave our families, jobs, our education, our friends, our connections, our familiar surroundings and our homes if Jesus asked us to? If He just showed up and said, “Follow me” with no explanations or direction.
· You could be following Him straight up a hill to be crucified. Maybe He would lead you to another country, and you would never see your family again. Or perhaps you would stay put, but He would ask you to spend your time helping people who will never love you back and never show gratitude for what you gave up.
· Could you do it?
· A lot of the time our thoughts are centered on the money we want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we want to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become.
· Why do we so easily turn our backs on a Mighty God that created the heavens and the earth and everything in between?
Every day of our lives we choose God or reject him simply by how we spend our free time, what our money goes to, and where we invest our energy.
True Faith, on the other hand, is holding nothing back and putting Everything we have into an eternity with God in Heaven.
It is a very simple concept but so complicated at the same time. Why is this?
Jesus himself said that the road is narrow and few will actually find it…
“Don’t assume that you are one of the few on the narrow way.”
Click here to view the video that accompanies Chapter 5.
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