If life isn't focussed, we dissipate our energy and resources. You get focussed in your finances with a goal and a target, you start to move your finances; but what about your life? It disturbs me that so many Christians, their Christianity is primarily church on Sunday. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not God's intention, and church has a great plan, and meetings have a great part to play in what we're called to do, but God has got something bigger than that.
So let me just read in the scriptures here, Ephesians 2, it says: but God - Verse 4 - God is rich in His mercy, and His great love, so wherever we fail, whatever we've done, God is rich, abundantly extravagantly rich in mercy. A lot of people think God's waiting to get them; but no, God is rich in mercy and immense love, remember He loved us even when we were dead and trespassers in sin, cut off from God, doing our own thing. Then He quickened us, and made us alive in Christ Jesus; and has raised us up to sit, or to live and to engage life, in the spiritual world. What an amazing thing - yet the majority of Christians don't understand how to engage in the spiritual world, and bring heaven into earth. That's what God intends we do.
He's connected us. He put His spirit inside you, so a part of you is 24/7 connected to heaven. How about that! Now of course we live mostly conscious of everything around us, and we're conscious of pressures and problems. This week we're conscious how cold it is, so you get conscious of all kinds of things. But what if you became conscious that you are connected to the resources of heaven, and that God is willing and able to work through you? I tell you something, that won't come easily. There'll be a contending for it, and so not only do we have an assignment from God, but the devil has an assignment against you.
It's helpful to realise - and we're going to look at this in scripture in just a moment - I want to make it really simple, how you can discover what God called you to do. It's not very hard at all. It has a general aspect that is very specific for you, and I'd love you to set your heart, that I will focus my life, and begin to discover and work towards fulfilling what God called me to do. So He said: made us alive, grace sits in heavenly places, the ages to come. He'd see the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. I won't develop much of that here, but the thing is: we're just in one age. There are ages to come, and the best things that God has, are not just now. The best things are reserved for the next ages, that are to come.
We've talked a little bit about that in one of the series before, for by grace - here we go - for by grace are you saved through faith, and not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, no works, no works - say that, no works [No works] No works to get saved, yet it's so easy for us to move away from that basic positioning. No works to get saved - His work got me saved. His work dealt with every sin, past, present, future. His work dealt with every failure, past, present, future. His work dealt with every curse. All I have to do is position myself to believe, and open my heart to receive what He has done. I don't have to work to get to heaven. I don't have to work to get God to love me. You don't have to do any work to do that, and yet there is a work we do.
So I love these Verses 8 through to 10, firstly it tells us His work. We are accepted and access God totally because of His work, not because of any of our works. However, notice what it says immediately after. It tells us this: so His work, Jesus' work, is the work of salvation. Our work is the work of advancing His kingdom. See? Jesus didn't just save you to get you to go to heaven. He saved you to fulfil the original purpose, which is to restore the earth, to restore people, to restore our community, one soul at a time. That's how you do it.