Encore - 985 - Who Must Increase? - John 3:30

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One again. Today I want to talk about a passage from John chapter 3, verse 30. John the Baptist is speaking, and he says “He must increase, but I must decrease.” I think about this passage in several ways. One way to think about it is to remember that this is John the Baptist talking.   John the Baptist isn't really part of the church. He's actually the last Old Testament prophet. He's outside of the church in some degree. He's still the body of Christ, because he, like the rest of us, are saved, but he's a prophet. He's been ordained by God to speak for God, and he's clarifying for his own friends and his own listeners that this is about Jesus getting bigger.   Jesus increases. He takes over. This is His show. The world is operated for Him, and He is on the stage. And the old model of the Hebrew life, the prophet's system, is going away. It's gone. And what's new is this “bridegroom and the bride”. He actually mentions in the verse right proceeding this “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.”   John's making this clear that all of everything that God is doing in the world is summed up in Jesus. He will increase. This is His show, His plan, and He's taking over, and I will decrease. This model will decrease. This also applies to us in the workplace. It applies to us everywhere. I think our sin nature is really, at its core, the idea that we get to call our own shots.    I want to be my own king. I make my own decisions. I choose what I eat, and I choose how I spend my time. I want to run my life. I don't want Jesus running it. I don't want anybody else running it. The “no one else running it” is all part of the great lie. We either serve God or we serve sin, we serve the enemy.    And when we think we run our lives, what we do is we separate ourselves from Jesus and we become part of the enemy. Satan, his people, the world, the flesh, and the devil. Those are the three groups of things that take us away from God. And so the world, our flesh, and our enemy, the devil, are all pulling on us, and the big deception, the big trick is we're in control. We get to choose. I get to call my own shots.    When I follow Jesus - and this is part of the reason why we call this organization Follower of One - when I follow Jesus, then my life works. Then everything about my life fits in eternity. I'm not outside of Christ's plan, I'm part of it.   I get to take part as a member of His church, His bridegroom. I get to join Him as He increases. This world is His, and He will run one day. Every knee will bow. Jesus will be running the show, and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord. If we can remember that He must increase and we decrease, then we put ourselves in a proper position to join Him as He works in the lives of the people that we come in contact with every day.    That's part of the reason why our first daily activity is to pray, and the first prayer that I like to talk about is “Here I am.” Lord Jesus. Here I am. I want to follow you today.   Would you please, as we used to do this when I was in the trucking business, they would give us a stack of freight bills and say, “here, go load this truck.” And we would go take each bill in that stack and go load the truck. Lord Jesus, today, would you give me my stack of bills and tell me what I'm doing? I want to do what you want me to do today.   And I get to take part, then, in your work in the world. Let's join Jesus in His effort today, and let Him use us, so that we get to see Him glorified. He will increase. We will get to see that if we join Him and follow Him.    Check us out at followerofone.org. We're an online community where we try to help one another. Remember, Jesus is in charge and we follow Him.   Thanks very much.