Daily writing prompt

What is the legacy you want to leave behind?

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When I’m gone, I want to leave a living legacy, not just lovely memories. I want to leave a movement. I want to inspire people to listen to the living Jesus and to daily follow and obey Him in the way He personally directs them. That’s why I write the way I do. I want to help people wake up to the glorious reality and powerful presence of the living resurrected Jesus Christ so that they can overflow with the beautiful characteristics of the fruit of His Spirit and demonstrate to hurting people that “Christ in you” is indeed “the hope of glory.” If that happens a living Spirit-led movement will begin, grow, and spread far and wide that will heal and restore multitudes of broken hearts and lives.

Just Jesus!
He alone
Is the way.
Treasure Him,
Follow Him,
Obey Him,
Worship Him,
Night and day.
Set aside
Opinions.
Faith isn’t
About them.
Keep your heart
Always filled
To the brim,
Overflowing
With Him!

Going in and out
Of church doors
Once a week
Can give you
A religious tweak,
But what this world
That is so bleak
Needs you to seek
Is to hear
Jesus speak
Directly in
Your heart
Until His light
Shines from your cheek
And you reflect
His mystique
In all you say and do.

Church attendance isn’t a replacement for moment-by-moment surrender to the risen Jesus. Sermons that are focused on the mind, might teach a mind some religious information, however God is after people’s heart. We are supposed to love the Lord with our mind, but also with our heart. Jesus quoted this verse: “This people honors Me with their lips (their religious form) but their heart is far from Me” If a sermon doesn’t draw people’s hearts into passionate focus on and intimate surrender to the living God, it’s just a dry religious lecture.

If our modern sermons are effective, why is church in decline and why aren’t churches influencing the culture toward godliness instead of being brainwashed into compromise by the culture? If sermons are effective, why aren’t we seeing the kind of spiritual awakening we see in the book of Acts? If sermons are effective, why is it a running joke that people sleep through them? If sermons are effective, why are they so quickly forgotten? If sermons are effective, why are people eager for them to end at a prescribed time?

One of history’s biggest church critics almost singlehandedly made a sermon the center of a modern church service. His name is Martin Luther and prior to his time church services were centered around bread and wine and liturgical words, garments, and actions. However, in the earliest days of Christianity worship was focused on the presence and control of the risen Jesus in and through the direct leading of the Holy Spirit.

We live in a culture where many people insist that you approve of and applaud their behaviors. If you suggest what you believe is a better way than the way they have chosen, then people often accuse you of hating them. From a lifetime of Bible study, and church history study, and from ways of relating to the living Jesus that keep my heart on fire for Him and aware of His presence, I have found a beautiful relationship with Jesus that I don’t get from any amount of sermon-hearing. I’m so excited about relating directly to Jesus in a heart-to-heart way that I want to shout it from the housetops! There are so many much more powerful ways of relating to the risen Jesus and enjoying His presence than hearing a weekly sermon. Listen to and preach all the sermons you want, but please don’t miss out on the other powerful ways of experiencing Jesus, such as: Spirit-prompted testimonies, praying out loud with other people, words of knowledge, prophesying, words of wisdom, open sharing, openly confessing and repenting of sin, obeying the Holy Spirit no matter how uncomfortable it makes you, devouring the Bible daily with an open heart, etc.