“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” – 2 Timothy 1:7

If Jesus is your Lord and Savior, meaning you’ve entrusted your life to Him in faith, then you have received God’s Spirit. The Holy Spirit seals you, which marks you as authentically belonging to God. The Holy Spirit also lives in you. You’ve probably heard this many times, but stop now and actually think about it. God’s Spirit LIVES IN YOU! YOU have the Spirit of God in you!

So, what kind of Spirit do you have? Certainly a HOLY Spirit. He is perfectly holy and seeks to make you like Him. He will point out your sins to you, guiding you to repentance and strengthening you to resist temptation. He’s also a Spirit of power. He gives you the power to be a faithful, bold witness to Jesus. He gives you power to do the good works God has prepared for you to do. Works that show people the reality of Jesus and His love for them. He gives you the power to overcome the fears that hold you back from taking up your cross and following Jesus each day.

He is also a Spirit of love. He gives you the power to love your enemies, turn the other cheek, and forgive those who persecute you. Why? Because He is the Spirit of Christ Who did and commanded these things Himself. The Spirit gives you the power to love by speaking hard truth and to love by remaining Christ-like when the world and the flesh tell you to respond in an un-Christlike manner. The Spirit gives you the power to love when it’s messy, painful, and frustrating.

He is also a Spirit of self-control. That isn’t too popular in our day and age that celebrates doing whatever you feel like and letting it all hang out. But if you have the Holy Spirit, He will lead you to become more self-controlled. More submitted to God. More determined to glorify God by not doing whatever you feel like. Willing to lay down your freedom in Christ for the benefit of other believers. Committed to rejecting the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil to instead enjoy the quiet pleasure, power, and presence of the Lord.

That’s Who lives in you, if Jesus is your Lord. If you’re willing, He will radically transform you to be more and more like Jesus. He will make it joyful, blessed, and possible to truly #FollowJesus wherever He leads.

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” – 1 Timothy 6:10

Money itself is neither good nor bad. It’s a tool. And, it’s a responsibility entrusted to each person by God, Who owns everything. What matters with money is what we do with it and how we think about it. Do you use it to provide for and bless God’s people and to build His kingdom here on earth? Or do you use it for selfish or sinful purposes? How do you think about it? Do you consider it to be a gift from God to be used for His glory? Or is it an end in itself that you are pursuing?

That is what Paul warns about here – when money goes from being a tool and a blessing to an unhealthy goal being pursued simply to have more. He talking about when our passion for money and its ability to control our emotions becomes more important to us than God (whether we realize it or not). When our sense of identity is rooted in whether we have money or not. When our sense of security depends on whether we have money or not. When we believe our happiness based on getting more money or having “enough”. When we trust that our problems would simply go away if we just had a bit more.

When we begin thinking this way, we’ve put money on a throne and given it a responsibility for our life that it can NEVER fulfill. We have, accidentally or intentionally, put it in the place of God. The truth is that our sense of identity should be rooted in the reality of being God’s beloved child, adopted when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. Our security should be rooted in His constant love, presence, and power. Our happiness should flow out of our relationship with Jesus Christ. And our problems will only go away, or at least matter much less, as we delight in our union with Christ and anticipate our problem-free eternity with Him.

Many Christians in our culture have accidentally replaced God with money without even realizing it. Has it happened to you? Take time to reflect on how much time and energy you put into thinking about money, worrying about money, desiring more money, or hustling for more money. Think about money’s power to affect your emotions. Does it make or break your day. Have you accidentally fallen into the love of money? If so, re-commit yourself to simply #FollowJesus

“Though the cords of the wicked ensnare me,
I do not forget your law.”
– Psalm 119:61

Like a creeping vine, in ways both subtle and obvious, the cords of evil are absolutely trying to wrap themselves around you. Your hands… your feet… your heart… your mind. Those opposed to God want to tangle you up. Trip you up. Tie you up. Make you one of them or at least leave you tied up on the sidelines. It may be people in your life who are pushing or pulling you toward their favorite form of sin. It certainly includes the pervasive presence of sin being demonstrated, normalized, and celebrated in practically every TV show and commercial. It’s our culture’s pressure (from many different directions) to fall in line with values and practices that go against God’s will, even when they sometimes present themselves as “Christian”. It’s in the algorithms that spoon-feed you content on various social media platforms.

Your best defense, if you’re a Spirit-filled follower of Jesus, is to know God’s Word for yourself. Read your Bible every day. Study it. Study how to study it. Meditate on it. Memorize it. Think carefully how to apply it to the situations and struggles of our world and your life today. The Bible isn’t just an interesting book from an ancient time. It isn’t just a beautiful thing to gather dust on your shelf. It’s God’s Word for you and your God-given defense against the relentless efforts of evil to entangle you. #FollowJesus

“So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” – 2 Kings 5:14

Naaman was a powerful general from an enemy nation who suffered terrible leprosy. On the advice of a young girl taken by his army, he went to the prophet Elisha to be healed. But he didn’t like what Elisha told him. It was too simple. It cost him nothing. He couldn’t contribute anything to his healing. He just had to believe and obey. When told to go dip in the river Jordan seven times to be cleansed, Naaman became angry. He’d brought treasure to buy his healing. He expected a dramatic act of healing appropriate for a man of his rank and power. He expected to have to work for his healing.

All that would have been fine with him. But to just believe the strange teaching of God’s prophet and obey it? That he couldn’t handle. He rejected Elisha’s words and planned to return to Damascus. Fortunately, his fellow travelers convinced him that if he was prepared to do hard things for his healing, then he should do the simple thing – believe Elisha and obey what he said. And it worked! He was instantly and completely healed. Not because the river had special powers but because God graciously cleansed Naaman when he believed with faith that resulted in obedience.

The healing of General Naaman of Aram is a picture of God’s amazing grace given through faith in Jesus Christ. Naaman’s anger and resistance to the simplicity of it all is a picture of why many refuse and recoil from God’s grace. Like Naaman, there’s nothing we can do to earn or buy our salvation from sin. We can’t do anything to make ourselves clean before the Lord. We can’t pay for it or contribute anything toward it. Jesus did everything for us when He stepped out of eternal glory and into the world, lived a perfect life without any sin, sacrificed Himself on a cross to pay the penalty for our sin, died, and rose from the dead. Because of what Jesus did, all we must do is believe that He is the risen Lord of our life with faith that leads to obedience to Him.

For many people, our complete dependence on God’s grace is too easy. Too uncomfortable. Our treasures don’t help. We can’t contribute anything to our salvation. This offends the sensibilities of many, because we naturally want to fix ourselves. For these reasons, many refuse God’s gracious offer of eternal life in Jesus Christ. Try to persuade them to see reason, as Naaman’s associates did. If they’re willing to do hard things to try and save themselves, pray for them to submit to the humiliation of just depending on God’s grace for salvation. There’s no alternative! #FollowJesus

“Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of his saints.”
– Psalm 116:15

What a beautiful truth! God treasures the life of His people so much that even our passing into His presence is meaningful and precious to Him. In our limited understanding of the Lord, it would be easy to assume God doesn’t particularly care about our death. After all, the moment we pass, our soul enters into God’s presence if Jesus is our Lord. And yet, God still mourns our death. Why would this be true?

Because death isn’t natural! Death wasn’t part of God’s good design for Creation. We were never meant to die. Death entered the world because of human sin. Because of sin, precious bearers of God’s image must endure death en route to eternal life with God. This wasn’t how God meant things to be and it grieves Him. Even though we’re washed clean of our sins by the work of Jesus on the cross, our death is a vile reminder of sin’s terrible corruption of God’s good Creation.

And so, it’s a beautiful thing that Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb before raising Him to life. It’s a beautiful thing that your life in Christ is so treasured by God that He will grieve your death as something you were never made to endure. That’s how deeply your God loves you! #FollowJesus