Are you qualified?

Good monday morning to you. I hope you had a great weekend. It was an awesome day to worship the King yesterday as the youth at our church lead the sevices. They did such a good job and it is so refreshing to see the Lord glorified through our young people!

Today I want us to think about our own personal walk with God. Ask yourself....How am I doing in my relationship with God and be honest. Your walk affects others...did you know that. People are watching you if you call yourself a Christian. This is why we must always be working on our relationship with Jesus and making sure it is in tip top condition. Look at this verse:

1 Corinthians 9:27
27 But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

Paul is telling us here that we must discipline our bodies and bring it under control. Under the control of who? God! To be a follower of Jesus is hard work and don't let anybody tell you different!!! I can promise you that if anyone calims following Jesus is easy they aren't following Jesus for Jesus himself told us it would not be easy! There are two reasons Paul told us to be disciplined...the first is for our own walk with God. The second is for others. You might be thinking others???? What do they have to do with my walk with God? Paul answers that question in the latter part of the verse above. For when we preach to others we do not become disqulaified. To explain this, what Paul is saying is this....if we are not following God in which the Word of God tells us, when we tell others about Jesus they will not listen.We become disqualified. Also remember this, we preach in two ways. One being the telling of the gospel by mouth. The second is the way we live our lives. It is fairly easy to talk about the things of God but living the Word of God is much harder and that is where the outside world is watching us everyday!

If the Apostle Paul found it important to discipline himself, so that he would not become disqualified when preaching to others, we should find it important too! So how about it....are you qualified? In reality we all should be qualified if we call ourselves children of God, so keep up the training and show the world your Jesus both in word and conduct!

Have a great day and pray for each other....Tom