Can the World tell you have been with Jesus?

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CURRENT RADIO SERIES Dare to Believe   CURRENT TV SERIES Dare to Believe

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. --Acts 4:13 Peter and John were two men who had been with Jesus.  For three years they had looked into His eyes and heard Him pray. They’d listened intently as He taught lessons of the kingdom and what it meant to follow Him. They’d seen His tears in the Garden of Gethsemane. They even watched Him die. Then they saw Him in the glory of His resurrection! Because they had been with Jesus, Peter and John acted like Jesus. In fact, their lives had been revolutionized so dramatically because of the time they spent with Jesus that when people observed them—even their enemies—they knew there was something distinct, something uniquely different about these men. When the world looks at you as a believer in Christ, I wonder if they can say the same thing. Can a watching world tell when you have worshiped…when you have bowed in your own time of prayer?  Do they see evidence you have been with Jesus? When you interact with your friends, your family, and your business associates, I pray they will see that there is something different about you…that you have been with Jesus Christ. Can the World tell you have been with Jesus?

The Rule of Sin

by Dr. Paul Chappell

“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Romans 5:19–21

When Thomas Jefferson was tasked with drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he labored to find words that would explain to the world why the American colonies were seeking their independence from the British crown and a monarch who had become increasingly overbearing. Before giving a long list of examples, Jefferson wrote: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”
Throughout history, many human rulers have been cruel, capricious, and overbearing as their power allowed them to indulge their worst impulses. But no man or woman who ruled, no matter how harsh or merciless, has ever come close to the devastating impact of the rule of sin over the lives of fallen people. Tyrants can destroy their subjects physically and emotionally, but they cannot reach the soul. Sin, however, enslaves its captives at the deepest level. Apart from God’s grace, we have no means of escape.
The only hope we have is the rule of grace replacing the rule of sin in our lives. Through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross we have been given life in place of death. We should rejoice and exult in the freedom God has provided. Yet too often we return to the chains of sin. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).
 

Today’s Growth Principle: 

Since grace offers us freedom from sin, we should never return to its cruel bondage over us.