Shape Up Week 2
Sharable notes for the January 15, 2023 message. You can post these notes on your social platform!
Scriptures used: Matthew 6:1-4; Proverbs 27:21; Matthew 5:14-16; 1 Corinthians 3:13; 4:5; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Ephesians 2:8-10; 6:6-8
The danger in wanting recognition is that we lose the approval of God when we seek the applause of men.
When our motives are colored with self-centeredness and it’s all about being noticed, then our righteousness becomes self-righteousness.
Don’t do your good deeds to be seen and admired by others. Let your good deeds that may be seen publicly be done for God's glory, not your own.
Praise is a litmus test for character and righteousness.
Our actions should tell the story of our transformation, and what that transformation means to us.
“It is important that we have a right aim; for if we obtain the result of a wrong aim, our success will be a failure.” Charles Spurgeon
Self-righteous service puts others into your debt, but true service edifies community.
To see good works by us is to see Christ in us.
"When the people of God are set free from the compulsion of self-exaltation and self-justification and self-preservation, so that we live for the eternal good of other people, then we become the light of the world and the salt of the earth, and people notice in us the reality of God and give Him glory.” John Piper
You are made righteous by the grace of God, and that righteousness is expressed through your life to bring glory to God.
You’re life is about what you can give now, not what you receive now.
Reflect or meet with someone to discuss:
Who is someone that has served you well or given a lot to help you? In what ways has their actions, or did their actions, affect your view of serving and giving to others?
In what ways might our serving or giving to others be done for the wrong reasons? How do we make sure they are for the right reasons?
How do you try to make sure you serve or give in a way that honors God instead of bringing glory to yourself? Or how can you start doing this?
Click the image to start a new 7 day devotion in YouVersion:
Practicing Righteousness—Giving, Prayer, Fasting, Money, and Anxiety. Jesus’ insistence that he did not come to abolish, but fulfil the law, is vital to understand the collected sayings of Matthew 5 through 7. That the law was interpreted through love—self-giving love—was a revolution that disturbed the religious authorities and amazed the common man and woman. A revolution begins.