Zebra Ministries

Good morning Zebras,

I love you.  Even though the people I referenced yesterday were both missionaries on the foreign field it does not mean you need to leave the country to live a life of faith.

Paul defines what a life of faith looks like in Philippians 3:4-14, a passage I have quoted before.  In it Paul lists all the things he had before he was a Christian.  All the reasons he should have had confidence in himself.  But he considered them all rubbish compared with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:7–11 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

That is not a man resting on the laurels of his salvation.

And starting in verse twelve he writes, what I’m sure is a life verse for some of you:  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

That is what a life of faith looks like.

Compare that with Jerry Bridges definition of ungodliness the sin he believes is most prevalent in the church:

“Ungodliness may be defined as living one’s everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God’s will, or of God’s glory, or of one’s dependence on God.” 

He goes on:

“Now the sad fact is that many of us who are believers tend to live our daily lives with little or no thought of God.  We may even read our Bibles and pray for a few minutes at the beginning of each day, but then we go out into the day’s activities and basically live as though God doesn’t exist.  We seldom think of our dependence on God or our responsibility to Him.  We might go hours with no though of God at all.  In that sense, we are hardly different from our nice, decent, but unbelieving neighbors.  God is not at all in his thoughts and is seldom in ours.

God does not call all of us to leave the country, but He does call all of us to fix our eyes on Him and live like He exists.

Love,

Jill