How to be More Like Jesus

“How To Be More Like Jesus: The Implausible Prayer”

www.pmchurch.tv

• □  The Prayer
  •   Ephesians 3:14-19
  •   The Creator and King, who rules over a galaxies and a stars

    across billion light years (and has all the stars—Psalm 147:4), wants

    to in .

  •   The implausible prayer: “That Christ may in your by faith.”
  •   “May your become His .”

     John 14:23

     Jesus: “We [the Father and I] will come to you and make Our with you.”

  •   Desire of Ages: “The contemplation of the of God will stir the heart and arouse the

    powers of the soul as nothing else can.” (478)

• □  The Product
  •   Frederick Buechner: “In my books, and sometimes even in real life, I have it in me at my best to

    be a saint to other people, and by saint I mean life-giver, someone who is able to bear to others something of the Holy Spirit. . . . Sometimes, by the grace of God, I have it in me to be to other people. And so, of course, have we all—the life-giving, life-saving, and healing power to be saints, to be , maybe at rare moments even to ourselves.” (The Longing for Home 28)

    •   When Christ dwells within us, He spreads Himself us.
    •   Stuart Devenish: “Every Christian generation has produced two kinds of Christians: the

      common, ordinary garden variety, and those who have discovered the deeper life. . . . [a life that] reflects a deep experience of Christ-likeness” (quoted in Beyond Well-Being: Spirituality and Human Flourishing 58).

    •   The grand goal of the everlasting gospel!
    •   “Be like Jesus, this my song, in the home and in the throng . . .”
  •   NB: This is a collective invitation.
    •   “That Christ may dwell in your hearts [plural] by faith.”
    •   The GROW Group experience: “. . . together with all the Lord’s holy people” (v 18)
    •   F. F. Bruce: “. . . it is Paul who gives distinctive expression to the idea of all believers,

      whatever their race or social status, united in a life as fellow-members of the body. . . . [T]he prime function of the indwelling Spirit in the believing community, as in the individual believer, is for Paul the reproduction of the Christ-likeness in his people, until the whole body corporate attains ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Ephesians 4:13).” (Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free 210, 211)

    •   Join a GROW Group now @ http://www.pmchurch.org/article/563/grow-groups/signup
  •   John Gilbert—“If Jesus Came to Your House”

    I want to be more like Jesus
    I’m following in His ways

    I’m trying to love as He did
    In all that I do and say

    At times I am tempted to make a wrong choice
    But I try to listen as the still small voice whispers:

    REFRAIN
    “Love one another as Jesus loves you

    Try to show kindness in all that you do Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought

    For these are the things Jesus taught.”

I’m trying to love my neighbor
I’m learning to serve my friends

I watch for the day of gladness When Jesus will come again

I try to remember the lessons He taught
Then the Holy Spirit enters into my thoughts saying:

—adapted from Janice Kapp Perry