Casey / Vladimirov Good Fish Bad Fish

How to Have Eternal Life, Live a Fulfilled Life and Avoid the Wasted Life.
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5439-7635-9
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 156 Seiten

A guide to living the GOOD, eternal, abundant and fulfilled life. What is a good fish or a bad fish? Jesus told a little story that is packed with life, but often overlooked. This story can help us to examine ourselves and see who we are, where we are headed and how we can live a life that is higher than what most are experiencing in the ordinary world around us. There is a way to live that is free, full and meaningful. But while this way of life is available and free, it is not automatic. You and I must make a choice to live not just for God, but also in Him. In responding to His love and all He has done for us, you will experience what the Bible calls both abundant and eternal life. This is the transformative message of Good Fish Bad Fish.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Casey, Kevin

Vladimirov, Linsay

Leseproben

Chapter 2 Very Important Fish “The greatest disease in the West today is not TB (Tuberculosis) or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved and uncared for.”1 —Mother Teresa Once my wife Melanie and I went to a Christian conference at the Fort Worth Convention Center. There were thousands of people at the meeting and it was being televised. We were looking for a seat as the meeting was beginning. An usher told us to follow him, and he led us through the aisle of pastors and ministers up towards the front. I thought, ‘Wow! This guy must think we are someone else,’ as we headed to the reserved seating area. He stopped and pointed to two seats on the very front row next to several ministry leaders that were affecting the whole world. I was not about to awkwardly correct his apparent mistake! We just smiled and thanked him. My parents had been attending that ministry’s meetings for over twenty years, and were sitting in the balcony, having never been to the front row before. We got the “very important persons” treatment, and did not mind one bit. It was a bit surreal to be sitting with no one in front of us. When the speaker was preaching, he got fired up and headed in our direction. As he stood right in front of me, we locked eyes and then he tapped my chest with his pointer finger. I actually flinched when he did. It is safe to say that being in that VIP position prompted us to pay very close attention to everything being said that night. VIF Did you know that in the eyes of God, you are a VIP? Or to stay within Jesus’ illustration of the fishing net, you could say, “He considers you a very important fish!” God really does love you, and He has a wonderful plan for your life. You may have heard that before, but it is not an empty cliché from a sentimental Instagram post. God’s Word guarantees this is true. Consider the words of the psalmist who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when he said, “How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!” (Psalms 139:17). Our kids are now young adults. Over the years, we spent many hours going to their high school to watch them perform. Christopher plays the trumpet, and so we always found the time in our schedules to go to his halftime performances at football games and seasonal concerts. On each occasion we arrived in the auditorium for a band performance, we would scan the arrangement of instruments to see where he was seated. We would then make our way through the hundreds of parents to find a good seat. You may be wondering, “What was a good seat?” A good seat was where we could see Chris the best. While there were hundreds of people in the room, we were there for our son. He is our VIP! He graduated this past year, and what once determined our schedule no longer does. We have not been to one high school football game or concert since. We were never there for the entertainment. We were there to celebrate our son, witness his accomplishments, and cheer him on in his expression of interests. Jesus looks on you the same way. Love Cannot Sit Still God is love and He loves you, but many have never felt this love because their lives have been caught up in a convoluted mess of sin’s consequences. Sin is the problem. Ever since the first man, Adam, it is everyone’s problem. Adam chose to sin, but his children were born sinners. “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Romans 3:23). When we agree to sin, it hardens our hearts toward God and gives the devil an inroad into our lives. The devil’s influence will always bring destruction to ruin your life and steal God’s best from you. That is why the Bible says, “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). The world without God is an environment saturated by sinful, hard, unloving hearts. Someone may say, “If God really loved us, then why is there so much suffering and difficulty? Love would not just sit by passively without acting to save a world of precious people made in His image.” The most referenced scripture in the Bible, John 3:16, tells us God did do something, and it cost Him dearly. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God did not just "say" He loves us. He demonstrated it through Jesus’ actions. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 NIV). He not only died to demonstrate His love for us, He lived it. Everywhere Jesus went, He destroyed the devastation the devil brought against mankind. “But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8b). The devil hated God, but could not attack the Almighty directly. He realized how important each individual man, woman and child is to God, so he went after us with stealth-like vengeance. He legally tricked Adam out of God’s glorious standard of a rich and satisfying life into a cursed one outside of a life-giving relationship with God. This destined mankind to share in satan’s guilty verdict; incarcerating him into the same punishment of the inescapable, eternal torment of hell. Jesus described this punishment as a, “fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”2 Without hope of redemption, God’s enemy tried to take His children with him in order to punish The Most High God—by hurting the ones He loved most. Today, satan is defeated and the problem of sin has been fixed3 (a big statement we will unpack and examine more in chapter four). However, he is still hard at work tricking mankind and blinding them to God’s plan of salvation.4 If he can keep human beings from hearing and believing, he will legally take as many as he can to hell with him. His tactic is to use the world’s system, which measures and compares us using a false appraisal, where we are evaluated based on our net worth, natural abilities, appearance and popularity. Visionless of our own value in Father God’s eyes, he leads us into destruction by elevating hollow, hurting people into the limelight, who do not make good choices, as examples of what we should be. But, when he is done with us, he quickly discards us like worthless garbage. Endless lines of volunteers show up for this cruel abuse in search for their fifteen minutes of fame at the expense of an eternity in God’s presence, where they could be enjoying His best. Consider the tragic words of Marilyn Monroe who is quoted saying, “It’s better for the whole world to know you, even as a sex star, than never to be known at all.”5 Officially, Marilyn died sadly of a drug overdose, broadly speculated to be a homicide.6 Either version is heartbreaking for a child made in God’s image, who is being blinded by the lure of the world’s praise. You may have felt ignored or overlooked in society. You may identify with the quote from Mother Theresa, that “the biggest disease today is the feeling of being unwanted.” You may have been passed over for a well-deserved promotion or recognition for all of your hard work. Or worse, someone else may have gotten credit for your performance and received the acknowledgment or compensation for your hard work and investment of time, resources and energy. Please remember, the world’s applause is a poor substitute for our heavenly Father’s adoration. You are His VIP. …the world’s applause is a poor substitute for our heavenly Father’s adoration. Jesus lived only to honor His Father, and would only receive honor from His Father. The world is full of VIPs that have no moral compass or eternal fruit in their lives. The devil’s trick is to market and persuade us into living for inaccurate reasons, for the wrong glory, and misplaced priorities, ignorant of our value in Father God’s eyes. The end result is a life full of distractions that amount to ashes in eternity, instead of the rich reward God had intended. Bad fish are hooked on chasing the lures of the devil—wasting their lives in pursuit of distractions instead of real living. Billy Graham said, “Many people teach that prosperity and a high standard of living are the highest goals attainable. The Bible teaches that materialism apart from God will destroy a nation as well as an individual.”7 The apostle John reminds us, The world is full of VIPs that have no moral compass or eternal fruit in their lives. “Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out, but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.” (1 John 2:15-17 MSG) The good fish has escaped the empty way of life, and has begun to understand his value to the heart of the Most High God. Listen to John 3:16 again in The...