Dear Tabernacle Family,
A friend, who is a children's pastor, was sharing a story this week about a four year old who apparently only paid attention to half of a baptismal service. She was found later at the pool forcefully dunking her friends and saying, “Die with Christ!”
I believe it’s time to teach her the second half of baptism. Fully surrendered and sold out to God does require death to self but there is a second part that leads to living victoriously and in abundance of God’s grace and mercy.
Paul writes in Philippians 1:21, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Paul well understood the true value of the heavenly reward. Nothing in this world can compare to the incredible life that awaits us on the other side of the veiled curtain. Paul’s confident expectation of heaven was paralleled with the task at hand. As we read in verse 22, there is a decisive mission that Paul reiterates. “If I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor….” Paul understood that the value of our lives is to produce fruit and in that fruit-bearing, there is an expectation that we would let our “conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ….” and that we would “stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” (vs 27)
It is so easy to get side-tracked in this crazy world of ours. We can be caught up in so many affairs that look like the true gospel. In all of this, there is a mission that can only be fulfilled when self dies and ambitions are laid at the cross.
Let’s revisit our purpose and live to fulfill the true mission of the cross.
Yours for the Kingdom,
Pastor Sharon Baldwin
Preschool Ministries
Director Southwestern Daycare