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We share stories of how the blood of Jesus has transformed ours and others' lives.
 Welcome to the Red Ledger. I'm Denalee Bell. Thank you so much for joining me today. I want to talk today about Jesus and what does it mean to follow him? What are, what are his expectations for us? I wanna start with, I. By grace, we are saved. Ephesians tells us, but our journey shouldn't stop there. And I think sometimes it does.
I think sometimes we get saved. I know it does. It did for me. This was my journey is I got saved and thought that was good. I went to church on occasion. Um, I. I read the Bible on occasion and my life probably bore that kind of fruit, right? I didn't really know who Jesus was because I only had bits and pieces of him.
Um, when you go spend 30 minutes in church once a month or once every couple months, or just Christmas and Easter, you, you can't really fully grasp all of who Jesus is and what he came to do that he came and died. For us to be saved so that we could live life abundantly. But as I developed in my Christianity and wanted to get to know Jesus more, um, and sadly it happened 'cause where there was a crisis in our family, and I'm sad that it took that, but I think that happens to a lot of people.
And I turned to God because. I didn't understand why my life was falling apart. And so he showed me, um, I didn't understand love and so he taught me what love meant. And I'm not saying I have a full grasp of it, but he taught me what it wasn't. And it wasn't the idea of what I have the rom-com love, right?
This feeling. 'cause we can have a feeling for somebody, but that doesn't necessarily mean we love them. Love is action and this is who Jesus is. He was a love in action. He was patient, he was kind. He was compassionate, he was gentle, merciful, he was truth. He had grace. He had overflowing grace and truth, and that's how I was saved by his overwhelming grace, that unmerited fever that I believed.
That I believed that he gave me, that grace he gave me, and by my faith, that he also imparted to me. I believed and I was saved, but it, it did stop there. And it makes me sad because nobody really helped me on that journey. Nobody helped guide me and so. That's what I wanna do for you. If you're not here, you know, if you are, that's fine too.
If I miss something, put it in the comments. If I'm missing a point that you think that other Christians need to hear, 'cause I'm, I'm a human, put it in the comments. But I wanna talk a little bit about Jesus' expectations. Um, Luke 9 23 says, if anyone wishes to follow me as my disciple, he must deny himself.
He must deny himself. That means he must set aside his selfish interest, what he wants for himself. He must exalt God's plans above his own. He must get in alignment with who God is and know who God is, so he doesn't misinterpret what God is telling him. We must know God, we must know his will, and then we need to also take up our cross daily.
That means we have to be willing to endure what comes. Looking for a special gift for somebody or maybe a treat for yourself. Check out our new store, red ledger gifts.com. We have curated an incredible lineup of beautiful Bibles, keepsake journals, candles, and so much more. So if you are looking for something special that has some meaning, check us out.
Red ledger gifts.com. Thank you. I think, here's the problem. I. I think also when I came to Christ, I believe there was this comfort level that I was going to experience that everything was gonna be good and comfortable. Right? Well, it wasn't, it's painful. It felt like whack-a-mole in the beginning, like he was rooting up all of the bad stuff that I had learned.
And rooting it out of me and replacing it with truth and him, and it was a little painful, especially if you've lived a life for many years living in sin and not understanding what you believed was wrong and how it actually hurt people. It is a little painful. Um. But it's a journey and it's a process.
So we do have to pick up that cross daily. And thankfully, he shows up with grace and mercy each day to lift me up, pick me up and show me the way. Thank you. Praise God. So the next part of that verse is, and follow me. Follow me. When we follow somebody, we walk behind them, right? We do what they do, so we conform to him to his example.
And if, if need be, we suffer. We suffer for him. And you know, we live in America, so our suffering isn't quite what we, we like in the Middle East, you can be killed for being a Christian. We are not living like that here in America. What is it hard to talk to about Jesus in front of your friends? You're worried they might ostracize you?
I mean, the extent of the persecution isn't quite what it is in other countries, but I, I will say that we live in a post-Christian era where it is getting more and more, um. I, I guess I'm seeing more and more Christian bashing I am that I'd never seen when I was younger. So I do see the persecution level rising, and we should be prepared for that.
It's not, we shouldn't be surprised for that. If we read this book, we wouldn't be surprised that that's happening. So are we gonna quit following him when it gets hard? When our friends don't like us or make fun of us, or ostracize us or don't include us anymore? Are, are we gonna still follow him? When our husband or wife doesn't believe like we do, are we gonna still follow him when our family turns their back on us?
'cause none of them are Christians. Are we gonna still follow him when it gets hard at the holidays because they're not Christians and you are, are you gonna still follow him or are you gonna succumb to to their world? Um, for a lot of years I succumbed to the worlds when faced with these challenges and.
It just created more destruction. And I got to a point where in my life where it was falling apart and I cried out to him to solve this issue and, and he told me I needed to learn what love was, and that is who Jesus is. Jesus is love. That is who we're supposed to follow. That is the example. We are supposed to be patient and kind.
We are supposed to be giving generous. Compassionate. We are supposed to serve others. This is love. Love isn't a feeling and that's enough. Okay? Love is doing this to somebody. You don't have that feeling for. That's what love is. Love is doing these things for your enemies so that they might see him.
That's love, that is loving and serving God. He expects us to grow in our faith. He expects you to know the word and to share the good news so that other people might not perish. He expects you to use your life, your testimony of him, and he expects you to share that so that others might know him. We're commanded to go to go create disciples.
That's what we need to go do. That's what he did. He went and created disciples. He went, he shared, he shared the story, and people followed him. His love, mercy, grace, forgiveness, humility, and truth are what we follow. I really love the word truth. Truth is where we find freedom. When I lived in the world, I lived a lie.
I lived in a lot of lies and. They create despair, depression, anxiety. There's no answers in the world that can solve or satisfy that missing part in your heart. The only thing that satisfies is Jesus. So how do we reflect that? How do we reflect that? We look at him, we follow him. You know, when I was a little girl, I had this best friend and her name was Carla and she was really cool and I followed her.
Whatever she wore, I wore. If she said it, I said it. 'cause she had all the cool, cool things to say, all the cool words, the cool slang. And I followed her. She got her hair cut. I cut my hair like hers. I just really admired her. I find it interesting. If you look at some of our young pictures, we look like sisters at some point because we spent so much time together.
But I, what I thought of when I was thinking about talking about this was that was my mirror. She was my mirror. What happens when Jesus is our mirror, when his word is our mirror, when that's who we spend our time and attention looking at, that becomes who we are. That's how we reflect him. We look at him.
We study him, we jazzed him. We hear him through the word. We spend time in prayer. We be with him so that we know how to look like him. And I don't even think it's, uh, it's not this striving, it's not this thing that we start to look like him, but as our faith grows and faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.
Right. As our faith is growing and we're walking out our salvation, the more time we spend like with him, the more time we're going, the more likely we are going to look like him. Now, when I don't hang out with Jesus and I binge Netflix, or you know, even over Christmas I wasn't really in the word much, which is crazy 'cause that's the time you should be right.
But we had company and we had activities planned and I found I wasn't connecting with God. It was funny how quickly I could look like the world, the things that came out of my mouth, the things I thought, the, how easily offended I was and the food I ate. The, the overeating, the, it just, it created almost felt like sickness and disgust looking back on it.
And I mean, he's so graceful. He's so full of grace and mercy that I just jump back in and he's here and he's waiting for me. And, and he did reach out to me, right? He did reach out to me, but I got sick and, and I missed church too. And it really. It really exemplified the problem of not being around him in my life.
You, I wasn't productive in my work, my marriage, my husband and I were fighting more. It just got kind of yucky. So now that I'm back in the word and back in church and doing all of the things that I enjoy doing with him, spending time with him, being with him. My life is starting to look better. We're starting to get along.
We're laughing more. My routine's picking up. I am looking more like him. I have patience for people again, but it's, it's important. It's important that we spend time with him so that we might reflect him, so that we can go out in the world so that we can love the people so that we can bring them to God.
'cause I really don't want anyone to perish. He has to come first before work, before family, before anything. And Luke 9 57, um, one of the people who's following, Jesus wants to continue on and Jesus says, yeah, I, let's go. And the guy says, Hey, um, somebody died. I need to go get them buried. And Jesus goes, no, let the dead bury the dead.
We're going. We're gonna go spread life, and this is all part of the same chapter that we were discussing earlier about denying yourself, right? This is leading up to this, and it really explains that we have got to put him first. If God tells us to do something and we're following him, that comes first.
We have to quit exalting ourselves and our selfish needs. Above what God wants. If we want to live in the peace and the joy and the abundant life and the freedom that he promised it is available, but it's wrapped up in our obedience. It's wrapped up in us actually following him and his example. Thank you guys.
Have a great day.