A Beautiful Life

Part 8: Confident in Christ

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Summary

1 John ends with John making sure that we know that we have eternal life through the work of Christ and that should fill us with confidence that He is all that we will ever need. However, the last line warns us to guard ourselves from idols. Idols are objects of misplaced confidence that should belong to God alone. Those things cannot provide for us what we need. Only God can do that. A Beautiful Life is one lived in the confidence that Jesus is everything you ever need.

Content
Lesser Gods

What’s the idol in your life? Is there something that you put on a pedestal? Something that is so important that you couldn’t imagine living without it? Whether we realize it (or admit it) or not, we all have idols in our lives. We all have things, people, or ideas that we put in the place that God alone should be in. These things are also the things that we put confidence in when it belongs in Christ.

Tim Keller said, “Whatever controls us is our Lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. We do not control ourselves, we are controlled by the lord of our lives.” We may not notice it, but the things that we consistently look to as our source of joy or power or longing may be the very thing that controls us. That, in turn, becomes the lord of our lives.

And whatever is the lord of our lives will be the thing that we will sacrifice anything for.


What the Bible Says About Being Full of Faith in 1 John 5
The idea of worshiping idols and allowing those things to have control over us is exactly what John is warning us about at the very end of his letter of 1 John. He says, Dear children, keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5:21). He says this at the end because he wants it to stick with them and with us – he wants his readers to grasp the seriousness of idol worshiping and of putting anything else in the place where God should be.

1 John ends with John making sure that we know that we have eternal life through the work of Christ. This should be what fills us with the confidence that He is all that we will ever need. However, the last line warns us to guard ourselves from idols. Idols are objects of misplaced confidence that should belong to God alone. Those things cannot provide for us what we need. Only God can do that. A Beautiful Life is one lived in the confidence that Jesus is everything you ever need.


What’s the idol in your life?

Any and all things can become idols in our lives, whether that’s power, people, pleasure, or something else. We long for success, then before we know it we are sacrificing time with our families and other important things to become as successful as possible. We so desire a relationship that we compromise our values and beliefs, making our relationship with Christ suffer and allowing a person or a desire to control us. We want comfort and pleasure no matter the cost, causing destructive behaviors to define our lives and causing us to hurt everyone in our path. Idolatry is a serious sin struggle, and John warns us about it because he knows the severe damage it can cause. 

But there is hope against idolatry. There’s another way – and His name is Jesus. 

The fight against idol worshiping is the complete and total confidence that Jesus is all that we need. Rather than believing that any lesser idol will provide us with the joy, peace, and hope that only Jesus can offer us, we choose to seek Christ and His ways, and the other gods in this world begin to pale in comparison to our one true God. 

What’s the idol in your life? Is it money, things, or comfort? Is it a person, a goal, or a status? Or is your heart truly content and full in Christ?

A Beautiful Life is only found in living in confidence that Jesus is all that you need. He’s the way, friend. Nothing else will ever come close to Him. So, what are you waiting for? Start living a life that is beautiful today.

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