WALKING THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE

Sadly, too many Christians think or feel they aren't doing anything for God if they are not a pastor, missionary, or worship minister. What has been failed to be taught to new Christians is how to live a sacramental life. Vital to understanding a Christian life is that you do not have to be on a church payroll to be serving our Lord Jesus. What I want to talk about is living a sacramental life.

I am an ordained pastor but a bi-vocational one. I supplement my income as a drywall finisher. I have gone into hundreds of homes and businesses and found that just being a drywall finisher presents more opportunities to share Jesus and help people than when I am in a pulpit or even teaching a Bible study class. Why is that you ask, because I am meeting them on level ground in the daily routines of life and they feel no judgment from me because they have no idea that I am a pastor. When people find out I am a pastor they usually stop talking or put on the masquerade of the pious church-going no sin around here person.

When you try to separate your daily life from your faith life you weaken yourself and put yourself in a state of confusion. Living life in line with the will of God is found in the Holy Bible. Truly the answers are there to be taught to you. Every act of this life can be sacred just as much as prayer, baptism, or Holy Communion. Now, this is not to say every act is on the same level of importance but that you can lift every act up to Jesus and allow your whole way of life to be a sacrament to the Lord. 

Cleaning the house, doing laundry, washing dishes, serving food, whatever the task maybe it can be done praising Jesus in word, thought, or song. Always being thankful for the blessings in your life. When I do chores around the house I think about Heaven and what chores will I do there with boundless energy! Learning how to be aware of your daily activities as acts of worship will bring you to a higher consciousness of faith and the spiritual life. It takes practice and determination to be aware that all you are doing, thinking, and feeling is living to give glory to the Lord Jesus. Let us learn to find God in the simple tasks of life. Let us be grateful for the life Jesus has given us.

Now do not let the Adversary convince you that you are not giving God enough of your time. Making you think that time devoted to God only counts if you are at church or reading the Holy Bible. Satan will try to make you feel you are failing as a follower of Jesus Christ. He wants to discourage you from trying to live a sacramental life. The devil wants to steal your joy in Jesus, kill your witness for Jesus, and destroy your chance at living a sanctified life.

May I remind you that when Christ died on the cross the Veil in the Temple was torn top to bottom. God by this symbolic act was telling the world that the Holy of Holies was now open to all those of faith in Jesus Christ and no longer open only to the High Priest but that now you are all priests.

Matthew 27:50-51(ESV)

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.

You are now the temple of God. You are now a priest for God. 

1 Corinthians 3:16 (ESV)

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

1 Peter 2:9 (ESV)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We no longer have to live complicated lives of faith. We no longer have to earn our way into Heaven, pay our way in, or perform works to please and be approved of by men or women to enter Heaven. Faith in Jesus Christ is all that Jesus requires from us. We no longer have to have some schooled clergy to bless the Holy Communion for we can do that for ourselves for we are a royal priesthood by our faith alone. Jesus came to do away with all the complications, roadblocks, and all the man-made rules added on to faith. Jesus Christ came to free us not enslave us like the Pharisees did with their religious laws that enslaved the Jewish people. Jesus came to free us of all that and wanted us to live our faith in Him by grace and love. 

Now if we are living our faith in that grace of Jesus then we can be living a sacramental life that is as sweet as honey in that love and freedom of joy that only Jesus Christ can give in and by the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV)

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.