Jesus came to completely revolutionize our lives. Even today if you study his teachings, they are revolutionary. These five passages of the bible show just how revolutionary his teachings are compared to the world’s view.
Luke 12:27 “Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say to you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.”
This is the best realization I ever had. God is my source, my job or retirement income is not. If I had lost my job, God would have provided some other way. Now that I have a retirement income, if I lose that some day, God will always be there to provide a way. We will always have God to lean on, He will never leave us.
Mathew 6:18-21 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Even today that goes against established concepts. How liberating it is to think we don’t have to worry about saving up money. It is how we worship God and treat each other that really count. By putting God first and doing kind things for each other we are storing up treasures in heaven. That is a nice concept to think about. It is a motivation to go out of our way to help each other. I would much rather have a nice “bank account” in heaven where I am headed, than leave it behind in a bank account on earth. Like they say, you can’t take it with you when you die. When I contemplate this verse, it makes me want to help others and do kind things in order to build up treasures in heaven. For example, it gave me great pleasure once to help the cashier in the cafeteria in the building where I worked. It was near Christmas, and she confessed to me that she would not have anything for her children until after Christmas when she got paid. But she said that it was alright because she had explained it to them. I went back to my desk at work, took out my ATM card, and withdrew $100. Then I took it to her and told her to buy something for her kids for Christmas. $100 may not seem like very much, but she was so happy she was crying. Talk about making someone feel great, nothing can make one feel as great as being able to help like that. If I made their Christmas a little brighter, that is a big honor that God allowed me to do that.
Mark 10:32 “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Who knows, maybe in heaven, the human being with the most honors will be someone we have never even heard of here on earth. It could be a humble maid that is so kind and so spiritual and has a good heart. And people that come across her on a daily basis think she is not important because she is a maid. But perhaps she will have a very high place in heaven, God’s world. Some of the most famous people here on earth may have a very low place in heaven, if they make it to heaven at all. I think about this when I meet people in my daily life who do not seem “important” in our way of thinking about them. Spiritually they could be very important people. I try to treat everyone with respect, thinking of it in this way.
Romans 8:35-39
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:
‘ For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.. “
How comforting that is. If we fall to the deepest depths, Jesus will lift us up. I have struggled with being bipolar since I was in my twenties. I have felt the lowest lows and the highest highs and the Lord has been right there with me through it all. It is so wonderful knowing wherever we run, Jesus is right there, we could not run away from His love even if we wanted to. Nothing can ever, ever separate us from His love.
At times in my life I felt defeated, like when I was hospitalized for bipolar disorder. I was only hospitalized because I went off my medicine. That is a difficult lesson for those of us with mental health problems to learn. No matter how much we would like to go off our medicine it is not possible for all of us. Some people only have one episode of mental illness in their life, and are able to go off all medicine. But for those of us who have multiple episodes, we pretty much have to stay on medicine all our life. This is a difficult pill to swallow sometimes, both literally and figuratively. There is nothing I would like better than to be medication-free. So there I was in the hospital, everything seemed like it was falling apart. Yet this verse lifted me up. I did not have to fight my battles, as Christ was there fighting the battles for me.
Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
We may not always understand why certain things happen to us or those we love. But we can only believe that God has a purpose for our lives. We have to believe that things are happening the way they are for a higher purpose, a higher good, a higher calling. If we offer up our suffering to the Lord, just as he suffered and died on the Cross, it seems to make it easier to bear. God has a purpose for each of us that love the Lord.
These are the five bible passages that help me get through my daily life. I try to contemplate these verses whenever I am having problems and they help me. I hope they help you too.