The last thing is that we need to represent God. How did Jesus represent God? He did it through His life. He did it by the kind of life He lived - purity, perseverance, commitment. That's how He showed what God is like. How else did He show it? He showed it by the way He related to people. He included people; didn't judge them, included them; showed compassion on them, served them. That's how you be a representative of God. It's not being a boss man, it's being a servant person, a loving person, a compassionate person, a person knows how to stand up for truth, and not be pushed around and manipulated by people. That's how Jesus did it.
He did it in his teaching. He taught: this is what it looks like. I'm living it out. He demonstrated what His father's like by his ministry, the power of the Holy Spirit. You're called to be that representative too, wherever you are. I cannot do what you alone are called to do. You can look and you can say: I've got all these culture issues and whatever. No, no, no! You're saying God didn't know what he was doing, when He made me like this, with this gender, this racial background, that family background, and that cultural issue to face. You're saying God didn't know what he was doing; but He did know what he was doing! He made you, and sent you there, to show what He's like, and what can be done by someone yielded to the Holy Spirit. Doesn't this bring honor to your life? It brings honor and dignity to what you're called to do.
You don't have to be looking at what anyone else is doing. That's the result of the fall, that comparison. I just need to know, and be confident, what God called me to do, and act at all times like his representative. God puts me in a body and you've got to do something. To be His representative means He puts me on a maturity pathway. The Holy Spirit is responsible for your personal maturity. It's His job. How does he do that? Well, he sets you up in certain ways. He just lets the fruit of what's going on in your life manifest, and people react, and suddenly you've got issues to face, and it causes you to look and say: wait a minute, I got areas in my heart that need healing. There's places I don't know the love of God. I've got issues in my heart because of the broken family I came from, the abuse I suffered, all of that thing. I've built walls and barriers, and now I'm resistant to God's authority in so many different ways. I see I need my heart healed. I see I've embraced lies about myself, and about life and people. I need the truth into my heart. I need to renew my mind. Oh, I see, I seem to be powerless. I need deliverance from things that have got around my life. Now I need to invest in building the qualities of the kingdom into my life - meekness, and humility and purity and uprightness and faithfulness and loyalty. I need to be intentional.
Your first part of your journey is just cleaning up your act. After that, it gets much deeper and it gets very personal, and just things which are little things that no one would even notice, the Holy Spirit speaks to you and tells you: that's not loving; come on, repent of that, and let me show you what it means to love people. How awesome! Called to relationship, intimacy, knowing him, walking with him, trusting him, honoring him. We're called to service, to serving Him, engaging in what he's called us to do, doing it passionately doing it well, fulfilling it faithfully, whatever it is. We're called also to grow, to grow up. You know, Paul said, put away the childish stuff, grow up! Grow up, to become like Christ. How, how appalling when the church remains immature! Immaturity looks like: it's all about me, and I'm offended. That's what it looks like. That's exactly the face of it. Immaturity! We must grow, must be committed to do that growing, amen?
Closing PrayerWhat an amazing privilege God has given us, that he has appointed us to manage his creation. How generous, that he sent His son, to fix up our mess, to die on our behalf on the cross, and to offer us a way back into relationship and into glory with Him. One of the saddest things would be for us to reject the offer, the invitation to be included in the people God calls my family.