Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”[1]
So are we making disciples of all nations? Or, if you're just a teenager, here's another question: are we even helping make disciples of our nation? Or are we doing the opposite?
Our World
This blog is about living out Luke 10:27. We need to help by using our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Let's take a glimpse at the world we need to, by the grace of God, fix:
Love is a foreign language to us. There are kids out on the street starving while the fortunate are living in mansions eating giant feasts. We take too much while some have too little. We can help fix this problem by obeying Jesus' words recorded in Matthew 25:34-40 and John 15:12.
We are not loving Christ, or others, with our soul. One of our authors Langston describes loving the Lord with your soul in this way:
"Well from my understanding, your soul is basically your core. It's you. It's your personality, how you view the world, your thoughts, etc.
It's not the same as your heart, which (again, from my understanding) is your passions, desires, goals and your emotions. That's just from what I know though.
I could have some details mixed up. :P But yeah.
Now the question is, how do you love Jesus with your soul?
Well, you first need a relationship with him. If he's a stranger to you it's going to be hard to love him in general. And its going to be especially difficult to love him with everyone you are.
The next thing is that you imitate Christ.
If you love someone with your soul, they are like a role model to you. And that's what Jesus should be. We all should want to be just like him.
We've fallen away from that. Christian means "of christ."
We should live in a way that people can tell we follow Jesus, or at least be able to tell that there's something different about us."[2]
About the lack of strength: there are some Christians who are not really of Christ. They just go to church on Sunday and forget about Jesus for the other six days of the week. I was once one of them, but God changed, and is still changing, me. I mean no condemnation on these people. I just think we should let them know where life is really at and show them the awesomeness of our God.
We live in a culture where atheism is growing. The faith of many Christians is being crushed by deceptive philosophies. The culture is displaying Christians as intolerant, hypocritical, and stupid. Since Christ commanded us to love Him with our mind, we must show that love not only to Him, but to others.
The Series
I and the other Agape authors want address these problems of the world while giving advice to fix them. So, we are doing a new series called "Rebuilding From the Ashes." A godly society has been burned up, but we can rebuild it through the power and grace of God. We can make a change. Since this blog is mainly written to other teenagers, we can do that. For the Bible says this in 1Timothy 4:12-
Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe. [3]
So this series will go in this format- there will be four posts for each three topics. The topics are:
-Making a difference in everyday life
-Shaping the culture
-Being the perfect example of Christ
I will write from the perspective of mind, Paul from heart, Courtney from strength, and Lang from soul.
I hope that you enjoy the series and that it inspires you to live life to the fullest by Christ. Please enjoy.
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Notes
[1] I copy and pasted this verse from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+28%3A19-20&version=NASB
[2] I am quoting Langston from a post called "Soul? Love? How is this going to work?"
[3] I copy and pasted this verse from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+4%3A12&version=NASB
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Hey! Here at 'AGAPE' we seek to minister to whoever we can and any comments would be a blessing and an encouragement! Thanks! -Paul