THE GOSPEL AS IT IS: WHY I FOLLOW JESUS Dr Josimar Salum

THE GOSPEL AS IT IS: WHY I FOLLOW JESUS

Dr Josimar Salum

Following Jesus, deciding to follow the Lord is deciding to die.

When He comes and says: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be a witness to me" ... we have already talked about it, the word in use is not "witness." This is false. This is a lie.

The word used is to be my "martyrs" ... You will be a martyr, you will die out of love for Me.

This is what He is teaching. Who wants to die for Jesus? Because to earn the life, you have to die ... This is the message of the Gospel.

To earn the life ... you have to give up everything you have.

This is what the disciples talked to Jesus about when they said: "Lord, we left our fathers, our mothers, what are we going to gain?"

They had understood the Truth! You will not gain anything.

Then Jesus added: "He who left his father and mother will receive a hundred times more."

But He adds in the Gospel of Mark an expression: with persecutions, with struggles.

See Peter when he preached in Acts chapter 2… They asked, “What must we do, brothers?” And he said, "Repent."

All this religion, all these things that you are doing, if it were today it would be ... all these services that we are doing, all these meetings that we attended, this is all wrong, ... You have to repent from it!

You have to find the way that pleases the Lord.

But we insist on doing the same traditions, we insist on doing the same things.

If you read the Gospel with this Kingdom perspective, your life will be totally transformed.

Start thinking about the Gospel, not as a rewarding Gospel.

They followed Jesus and what did Jesus offer Peter when he met Jesus there in the Sea of ​​Galilee? He offered for him to be a fisherman of men, that was the promise that He gave him.

He gave no promise that he would prosper greatly ... You can see that on two occasions when they go to meet Jesus, their business was almost bankrupt.

At first, Jesus gave that order for them to catch many fish and there after the resurrection the same thing.

They did not have the dimension of the blessing to follow Jesus.

You do not follow Jesus to be blessed, this is a fake message! You do not follow Jesus to be healed, this is a fake message, this is not the message of the Gospel.

You do not follow Jesus to prosper, this message is a fake message.

You don't find such things here in the Bible, "accept Jesus or convert to Jesus so you can be blessed." No!

We surrender to Jesus because He is Lord. What will happen to my life after that is none of my business.

I can be blessed. "I am blessed, I am in the USA, man. I have a good job, I have an office ..." But there are brothers who are there in Iraq who do not have an office.

They receive Jesus to die, literally.

Those who are in China in the concentration camp.

So who is this God that after I start following Him, my prize will be being imprisonment for 3 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? 

It is because we only have the perspective of our place, our city, our country.

We don't have the perspective of the Gospel throughout the earth, and what does that mean?

"We don't want to be persecuted, that's why we are fighting communism in Brazil" But the Church is already being persecuted for something worse in Brazil, for materialism.

I don't need communism to make it ineffective, it already has materialism, it already has all these facilities.

This is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is true, I will be healed, Jesus heals me but there are others that Jesus does not heal, others He kills. There are others who die injured, there are others who die burned.

I see the brothers in these COVID days, people send me messages, and I'm not saying this to judge anyone, "Look what a blessing, the pastor was healed" Well, my mother-in-law died, what a blessing, she died, brothers. And I don't say this because she is a mother-in-law, all right? My father died, I almost died.

Now, the Gospel of the Kingdom is a Gospel that declares that even if this happens to me, I continue to be blessed, because I was saved, I was reached by Jesus to be like Him.

And to be like Jesus I have to suffer, to be like Jesus I have to die, to be like Jesus I have to be crucified.

To be like Jesus I need to die to receive the Holy Spirit who is the Power of God that vivifies me from the dead.

#ASONE