Live Holy Lives (I Peter 1:13-21) God's Word & The Message Translation

God's Word Translation
13  Therefore, your minds must be clear and ready for action. Place your confidence completely in what God’s kindness will bring you when Jesus Christ appears again. 
14  Because you are children who obey God, don’t live the kind of lives you once lived. Once you lived to satisfy your desires because you didn’t know any better. 
15  But because the God who called you is holy, you must be holy in every aspect of your life. 
16  Scripture says, “Be holy, because I am holy.” 
17  So if you call God your Father, live your time as temporary residents on earth in fear. He is the God who judges all people by what they have done, and he doesn’t play favorites. 
18  Realize that you weren’t set free from the worthless life handed down to you from your ancestors by a payment of silver or gold which can be destroyed. 
19  Rather, the payment that freed you was the precious blood of Christ, the lamb with no defects or imperfections. 
20  He is the lamb who was known long ago before the world existed, but for your good he became publicly known in the last period of time. 
21  Through him you believe in God who brought Christ back to life and gave him glory. So your faith and confidence are in God.

The Message Translation

13-16  So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”

17    You call out to God for help and he helps—he’s a good Father that way. But don’t forget, he’s also a responsible Father, and won’t let you get by with sloppy living.
18-21  Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.

Listening And Doing (James 1:19-27) God's Word and The Message Translation

James 1:19-27 (God's Word Translation)
19  Remember this, my dear brothers and sisters: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and should not get angry easily. 
20  An angry person doesn’t do what God approves of. 
21  So get rid of all immoral behavior and all the wicked things you do. Humbly accept the word that God has placed in you. This word can save you.
22  Do what God’s word says. Don’t merely listen to it, or you will fool yourselves. 
23  If someone listens to God’s word but doesn’t do what it says, he is like a person who looks at his face in a mirror, 
24  studies his features, goes away, and immediately forgets what he looks like. 
25  However, the person who continues to study God’s perfect laws that make people free and who remains committed to them will be blessed. People like that don’t merely listen and forget; they actually do what God’s laws say.
26  If a person thinks that he is religious but can’t control his tongue, he is fooling himself. That person’s religion is worthless. 
27  Pure, unstained religion, according to God our Father, is to take care of orphans and widows when they suffer and to remain uncorrupted by this world.

James 1:19-27 (The Message Translation)

19-21  Most this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

22-24  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.
25  But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.
26-27  Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

Do Not Love The World (I John 2:15-17) God's Word & The Message Translation

I John 2:15-17 (God's Word Translation)
15  Don’t love the world and what it offers. Those who love the world don’t have the Father’s love in them.
16  Not everything that the world offers—physical gratification, greed, and extravagant lifestyles—comes from the Father. It comes from the world, and 
17  the world and its evil desires are passing away. But the person who does what God wants lives forever.

I John 2:15-17 (The Message Translation)
15-17  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.

Jesus The Bread of Life (John 6:53-59) God's Word & The Message Translation

GOD'S WORD TRANSLATION
53  Jesus told them, “I can guarantee this truth: If you don’t eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don’t have the source of life in you. 
54  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will bring them back to life on the last day. 
55  My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 
56  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me, and I live in them. 
57  The Father who has life sent me, and I live because of the Father. So those who feed on me will live because of me. 
58  This is the bread that came from heaven. It is not like the bread your ancestors ate. They eventually died. Those who eat this bread will live forever.”
59  Jesus said this while he was teaching in a synagogue in Capernaum.

THE MESSAGE TRANSLATION
^53-58 But Jesus didn’t give an inch. “Only insofar as you eat and drink flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you. The one who brings a hearty appetite to this eating and drinking has eternal life and will be fit and ready for the Final Day. My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. By eating my flesh and drinking my blood you enter into me and I into you. In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me. This is the Bread from heaven. Your ancestors ate bread and later died. Whoever eats this Bread will live always.”

⁵⁹ He said these things while teaching in the meeting place in Capernaum.

Today Is My Tomorrow

Today is my tomorrow. 

It’s up to me to shape it,

TO TAKE CONTROL

And seize every opportunity.

The power is in the choices

I make each day.

EAT WELL, I LIVE WELL.

I SHAPE ME

Live a Life that Matters

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.  There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.  All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.  It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.  Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.  The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.  It won’t matter where you came from.

It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.  Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.  So what will matter?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built.  Not what you got, but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew but how many will feel a lasting loss when you are gone.

What will matter is not your memories but the memories that live on in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident,  It happens by choice…

From:   “For With God Nothing Shall Be Impossible-:Luke 1:37” page