After Jesus rose from the dead He taught His disciples and appeared before hundreds of people. Many of them were still alive when Paul was writing His letters and could verify they saw Jesus alive after He had been crucified. Jesus then ascended to Heaven to rule over His invisible Kingdom just as was prophesied the Son of Man would do in the book of Daniel.
So then, we are to have our hearts and minds set on things above rather than on earthly things. Our ambitions should be more about advancing God’s kingdom than our own.
By the way, all are invited into this new Kingdom – men, women, Jews, Gentiles (all non Jews), slave, free, and even barbarians and Scythians, the most uncivilized of all people. And all can experience a new way of living.
When we surrender our life to Jesus and choose to follow Him then we have died to self. We now live for Him! That means old bad habits that we’ve had need to come to an end – like sex outside of marriage, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language.” – (Colossians 3:5, 8 NIV)
Instead we become people known by our compassion, our humility, our kindness, our willingness to forgive, our unity, and most of all our love.
We take off the old and replace them with the new. Instead of being known for anxiety, we become known by our non-anxious presence, our peace.
In all of our relationships including with our spouse, with our kids, with our parents, and even with our boss: “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, we do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” – (Colossians 3:17 NIV)
We will reap what we sow. If we sow and flirt with evil, we will experience evil. If we instead go the way of Jesus, we will receive a reward in heaven.
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