Our Best Life Isn't Now
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Introduction
Introduction
I am humbled to be here tonight and I pray that God will use this message to penetrate each heart in the room. I know that many of you here tonight are professing Christians. Some I know more than others and have witnessed the fruits of God’s grace in your lives. Others I may not know as well or even at all. I believe that this text we will encounter tonight has a clear message for both the believer and the non-believer. So, as you listen tonight evaluate your heart and your mind. If you are a believer ask yourself if your mind is set on things of this world or things that are of Christ. If you are not a believer ask yourself what aspects of life have always seemed to be hidden or out of reach.
Turn with me to .
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Prayer
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”
For someone to be “raised with Christ” we must first have had to been lowered, or buried. Of course to be buried one must first have to die. This idea of dying to our old selves with Christ and being raised with Him with a new life is seen throughout all of Paul’s letters in scripture. If you look back to the second chapter of Colossians in verses we see a clear picture of this as Paul references one’s baptism.
having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
Baptism is an outward expression of an inward work done only by God. It is the physical picture of someone having died, been buried and been resurrected to a new life in Christ.
Now that we have died and our old selves are gone we are to act and even think like new creatures. Creatures that are continually seeking and pursuing good and Godly things. The idea here is that, as followers of Christ, we should pursue things that have a spiritual value, an eternal value.