It’s one thing to encounter God or even to learn about God. But how can a person enjoy a constant walk with God rather than an up-and-down experience? Learn how you can be fully charged!

<p>It’s one thing to encounter God or even to learn about God. But how can a person enjoy a constant walk with God rather than an up-and-down experience? Learn how you can be fully charged!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Fully Charged

I'm really grateful to have this opportunity to open up the Bible with you and want to encourage you in your walk with the Lord.

Expect God to do big things and hang on to God by faith.

He, Jesus, is the author and the finisher of our salvation.

Let's pray as we come to the Bible and then open it in God's presence.

Our Father in heaven, bless us now as we come to your word.

I think everybody's had this happen at least once or twice in their lives, most likely more.

You know, you grab the phone or the camera, you wanna video the kids or the grandkids doing something you want to remember, you press the button, but there's no power there.

The battery is flat and you've lost the moment.

Or you're working on your computer and suddenly you get a warning that you had better save your work or plug the electricity back in or else everything's gonna be gone.

And these days with all kinds of devices and digital this and that and so forth there's seems like everything we use depends on battery power and therefore has the potential to run out of juice.

And when there's no power there, you can't take your photos and you can't connect to the internet and you can't film little one's piano recital and so on.

A few days before our family was about to start out on a long road trip, out of the blue, the car would not start, flat battery.

Until the very moment we got in the car to leave on the trip.

We've all learned from experience the best thing to do is to keep the batteries for all of the electronics fully charged at all times.

That way when you need the power to get going there isn't going to be a problem.

The Christian life is very much the same.

There's a need for the Christian to be fully charged.

The Bible teaches us that when we are connected to Jesus, we are connected to the source of all of God's spiritual power.

We're told in the Bible that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

The wonderful message about Christ and the experience of having Jesus in your life.

And there are times you really need that power.

I mean all the time, but when temptation comes, you want to know that you have the ability in Jesus to overcome and not instead be overcome.

Keep in mind that in the book of Revelation Jesus says repeatedly, to the 1 who overcomes will be given.

To him that overcometh, she who overcomes will be given.

So how in the world can we not only experience the power of the gospel, but do so consistently?

How can we say, how can we stay fully charged?

Let's remember some things that really ought to be foundational for us.

You remember Paul the Apostle, once he was Saul the Pharisee.

The Pharisees were a sect of Jews that tended to be very concerned with correct forms and methods and practices.

They believed very much in righteousness.

But when Saul became Paul, he learned that his righteousness, his righteousness in and of himself, his righteousness did not mean that he was actually righteous.

He referred to his righteousness as being that which was of the law.

His righteousness as a Jewish believer, frankly any kind of believer, it did not mean that he was truly righteous in the sight of Almighty God, because what he had was self-righteousness, when what he needed was the righteousness of God.

The only person who ever lived on this earth and lived with a sinless life without falling in some moral way was Jesus.

And Paul came to the realization that having faith in Jesus as his Savior, by that, he would receive Jesus' own righteousness.

Then, possessing the righteousness of Christ, credit for Jesus' righteous life, he was therefore righteous.

By believing in Christ as his Savior, he was considered as having Christ's righteousness.

Now clearly the Bible considers a couple of important factors in association with this.

1 is that Christ's righteousness is not simply a covering to cover your sins and leave you unchanged.

Still exactly the same before you met Jesus.

Remember, John wrote this in 1 John 1 and verse 9, that God not only forgives us our sins but cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

Second is that in our lives sin is a choice.

But the act of transgressing the law of God is something that we either choose to do or choose not to do.

Now I know you might say, oh man, this thing I did just happened.

It happened before I knew what was going on.

And that's the result of a choice to either surrender in that moment to Jesus or not to surrender in that moment to Jesus.

It's really hard to sin if you are saying at the time, Lord Jesus, I surrender my life to you at this moment.

Now, a third thing is that Rome was not built in a day.

We've talked about this, I'm sure we have.

I know I have to be very careful in saying this, but when a person comes to Jesus and Christ enters their life, that person isn't guaranteed of making 100% right decisions from then on.

In fact, I would guarantee the person won't.

That's because simply there is a process involved called growth.

Jesus called our coming to Him in faith being born again and newborns grow.

While your eyes are on Jesus, you remember the verse in the Bible that says, My little children, these things I write unto you that you sin not.

But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

I hate to use a terribly inadequate analogy, but let me put it this way.

The Viper is a sports car that has about a 500 cubic inch engine in it.

The very first time I drove it forwards, I put it sideways.

Now that's not how you drive a car, but I'd never driven 1 of these before.

And it was something I needed to get used to.

But before long, I was able to drive down.

I was able to drive, before long, I was doing 35 miles an hour down the street.

You see, you've got to learn to cooperate with the power and the presence of Jesus.

I had to figure out how to handle that much power, how to handle a car.

As I said, it's an inadequate analogy, but you have all this power on offer extended to you from heaven.

And it's utterly imperative that we learn how to cooperate with the power that God wants to bring into our lives.

Related to this, we come into faith in Christ with a whole lifetime of history.

We inherited tendencies to evil that we have to deal with, born that way.

Your dad was an angry man, you grew up in his shadow.

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Fully Charged

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