644 Our Ministry Today - Galatians 2-20

If Jesus saved us for a relationship with Him, then why are we still here? Why didn't he just take us to heaven?

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. This is a question that comes back to my mind, often. I know that I've been saved for a relationship with Christ. I know that my transformation is all part of Christ's work in my life to make me more like Him.

But why is he still doing it with me here? Why wouldn't he just take me to heaven? Galatians 2:20 is a favorite verse of mine, and I was studying that passage today and I want to read it from the Legacy Standard Translation or the Legacy Standard Bible. This is a newer translation that has just come out. It's not that different from the way I memorized it. 

It says "I have been crucified with Christ and 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 up for me." 

I think about this passage often as I go to work or as I get ready to do my job. I really work out of my home right now. So I'm, I'm not doing commuting much anymore, which is kind of nice. But I want to live in the presence of the people that I'm with every day via Zoom or on telephone calls or any other way that I interact with people. I want to live before him in such a way that Jesus becomes visible.

I want to live my life in the flesh, by faith in the Son of God. It's the one thing that I can do. One day, I won't be able to do that anymore. As I get older, I become a little more conscious of the end time; the end for me time. I don't know that Jesus will return to our planet before I have taken my last breath, but I want to live in such a way that my life glorifies Him; that other people see Jesus through my life. I believe that's why he left me here, was to help me grow in Him, but also to show the world what it looks like to be a broken person, trying to follow Jesus. I believe we've all been given that opportunity. That's our ministry. 

Ministry is nothing but service. The word often translated as "minister" is also often translated as "servant." And today I believe because we follow Jesus, he has given us a ministry. He has given us the challenge to live in the flesh, by faith in Him. When we live in the flesh by faith in Jesus, we make Him visible in our world. 

Our world sees an alternate way of living. They're not told necessarily an alternate way of living. They just see it. We want them to experience our life following Jesus. That's part of the reason why we have these five daily activities in Follower of One. One of them is that we pray for our coworkers. We pray for the people that we interact with every day.

I pray that they will see Christ and they will be drawn closer to Him. And that's what I pray for every person that I interact with, whether they're believers or not. I can help other people move one notch closer to Jesus. And so can you. When we live by faith in the Son of God, we make him visible in our world.

That's our ministry today. We help other people move one notch, closer to Jesus, simply by the way we live. Today, let's remember that the life that I want to live, my old flesh and my own desires, and even my own frustrations with how things work out in today's every day, those things don't matter anymore. My top priority is to live the life Jesus has for me to live today and to make him visible.

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for considering how your life is no longer your own. It's Jesus'. And let's live in such a way that Jesus is visible to the people that we work with today. Thanks for being a marketplace minister.  If you haven't done so yet, hang out with a bunch of us who are trying to do this every day. Head over to our online community, https://community.followerofone.org.

Thanks very much.