The Essentials of the Christian Life

Social distancing. Keep yourself 6 feet away or further from another.
Shelter at home or safer at home. Just means to stay at home as much as you can.

We hear these terms a lot here lately and are things that we’ve not heard about before. But one term that stuck is the word essential. The leaders decided what was essential during this time. Businesses were forced to close while other could remain open just because they were declared essential or not.

The Essentials of the Christian Life

Everyday when we wake we know that there are things that are essential. Now God news the very thing that you need. Others are watching and looking at you and wanting to see hope.

Galatians 5:22-23

Love, Joy, Peace, Long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

A peach tree produces peaches and peaches only. It can’t bear apples because it’s not an apple tree. Just the same as a Christian. A lot of folks call themselves Christians but if what comes out of you is NOT Christian then you are confused. Those wonder why they can’t live like they think a Christian should. Those are trying to produce something that they simply can’t because they are missing the most important at part, being saved.

Christians are often pruned in order to bear more fruit and they are loved. A Christian doesn’t have to work to produce their fruit. Just as a peach tree, at times it will produce a fruit that may have a worm, or be bruised but it’s still a peach. It will not produce an apple. The Holy Spirit knows nothing but to work in a Christian and therefore produce the fruit. We but just the tree, He pushes out the fruit.

Faith, hope, and charity, those three abide within a Christian. But the greatest is charity. There are essentials in a Christian life.

Faith
Faith is the evidence of things unseen. We know the wind blows but you can’t see it. But the evidence that it’s there is because we see the wind moving things. As a Christian your faith should always be growing. God always helps with those things that you can’t see, He helps your unbelief. But, we have to be a useable tool, we must focus upon Him. We are still learning to allowing Him to be in control. Faith is Essential! Faith without works is dead. What is the works? In the story of Abraham we see that God told him to take his son to be sacrificed. The works was Abraham following thru with it and obeying God. When God told Moses to stand still and watch Him work. If Moses did stand still then God couldn’t work. Moses making a choice to stand still was his works.
Where is your faith?

Hope
Faith and hope go together. The very things that of your faith is your hope. For a Christian, Christ is the object of our hope. Our bible, we believe it to be truth, the Word of God, the object of hope is written within it’s pages. Now in this book we read of place, Heaven. Our faith in the object, Heaven gives us our hope isn’t Heaven. Romans 8:24, seek your hope if you’re a struggling Christian. People without hope become depressed, negative, and rough. They’ve allowed things of this world to interfere with their Spirit. Job’s wife told him to curse God and get it over with when he had lost everything in his life. Job while in his pain told his wife that she talked like a foolish woman. He knew the hope because he had faith. He stated, if a man die will he live again to which he responded to himself and stated yes. The world has faith but they don’t have Christ. They have the ability to believe, it’s what they believe in that’s wrong.

Love
Love is simply charity. Christ is the ultimate charity giver as He gave His life for the lost. He is Agape love, a love that not because of but in spite of. John 3:16, same love. In 1 John we know that God IS love. Love is something that we can’t understand. Loves goes further than we will ever know. From the beginning God gave the commandment that you should love God with everything within you. One should also love their neighbor as themselves. All of the other 8 commandments could be covered with just those 2 commandments.

You first thought in the morning when you wake should always be to love God and then love your neighbor. As a Christian, one of the things that should come easy is to love God and neighbors. God is always helping with the loving.

Essential to the Christians life, faith, hope, and love.
Do you struggle with doing those things?