“I pray not only for these, but also for those who will trust in me because of their word, that they may all be one. Just as you, Father, are united with me and I with you, I pray that they may be united with us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you have given to me, I have given to them; so that they may be one, just as we are one —
I united with them and you with me, so that they may be completely one, and the world thus realize that you sent me, and that you have loved them just as you have loved me.” John 17:20-23
I believe every Christian Ministry has a central theme to it. For some it is healing, for others salvation, there is faith and the list can go on and on. The one thing that should always be the focal point is Christ or it is not a “Christian” Ministry. My theme is encouragement. Everything I do and teach has a tendency to resonate encouragement to be all you can in and through Christ.
If encouragement jumps out as my main theme, then my subtopic is always relationship. You see, you cannot be ALL that you can be without your relationship with God being intact. It is through this relationship that you learn the true meaning of who you are.
As you read in our opening scripture, Yeshua has prayed us into oneness with Him and the Father which denotes a relationship. You will very often hear me say that Yeshua was born a Jew and died a Jew. He did not come to earth and suffer all that He did to start a new “religion”. He never once renounced being a Jew nor did He ever try to convince anyone to depart from following the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The purpose of His coming was to reconcile us back to God the Father which He accomplished on the Cross by shedding His blood as atonement for our sins. His job was done when He said “it is finished”; however, our work was just beginning at that point.
Before your jump up and accuse me of heresy, no, I am not saying we have to work for salvation. Christ took care of that on the cross, all we have to do is accept His atonement, believe that He is the Messiah and ask Him to take up Lordship in our lives to receive our salvation. There is no work we can do to earn it, we simply receive it.
Now that we have clarified that, the work that begins at that point is the development of our relationship with God. As in any relationship, for it to grow, both parties involved has to work at its advancement. God’s work in this equation has already occurred, He knows us better that we know ourselves. We on the other hand have much to learn about our Father in Heaven. Good news is He has availed Himself to us to learn of Him.
He has given us His Holy Spirit to teach us, guide us and reveal to us all that we seek to know about the God we serve who loves us not just as our God, but as our Father.
My encouragement to you today is to first, recognize that saying you are a Christian is not declaring your allegiance to a religious set, it is saying that you have a relationship with Christ “God’s Anointed One and His Anointing” and with God the Father “Creator of the Heavens and the Earth”; Second, to seek to know Your God and be all that He created you to be.
Religion will cause you to just repeatedly do something just for the sake of doing; Relationship will cause you to be somebody for the sake of what you were created to be.
God Bless you!
©Coylette James 2013
Coylette James - Influence Igniter 