Live Free with Josh Howerton - Change from the Inside Out | Ep. 236 | Monday, January 1, 2024

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

One of the most important kinds of changes in our lives is the kind that comes from the inside out. Jesus is the author of this change. When we get to know Jesus and follow Him, we will never be the same! Join us as we take a look at the book of John and get to know Jesus through the eyes of one of His closest friends. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, happy New Year, everybody. This is the Daily Drive, and I am Mike Bro, and I hope that your Christmas season was absolutely awesome. I can't believe it's 2024.

I can remember as a kid thinking that 2024 would be like so far into the future. And I remember thinking that we would probably have like self-driving cars that could help you with parallel parking, and we'd be able to see each other on our phone, and we'd be able to play music and take pictures with it and carry it in our pocket. I thought someday there will be this thing called podcast where you could just click on a link and it would connect you and a bunch of other people from all over the world onto this thing that would be called like the internet and together we could learn and grow. All right, I never saw any of that coming. But man, I have witnessed so much change in my lifetime.

And no matter how old you might be, you've witnessed a thought of change too. And that's what I love about the new year. It kind of announces there's hope for a change. Some of you are hoping, some of your planning. committing to some kind of health change or career change or financial change, relationship change, all good and worthy goals. But I want us to focus where it really counts on change from the inside out. And that change, guess what?

That's possible too. And it happens when you walk with Jesus. You know, getting to know Jesus has been the biggest catalyst for change in my life. Not only have I seen a lot of changes in the world, I've seen a lot of changes in me. and it all points to Jesus Christ. So I thought as we start the New Year together on the Daily Drive, we just hang in the Gospel of John, trying to get to know Jesus better. The word gospel simply means good news, the incredible good news of God's love through the person of Jesus.

And it was written by Jesus' best friend, John, who writes like he's trying to say to you and me, you all really need to follow Jesus. Not like some social media follow, but really like follow him. Because I'm telling you, there is no one like him. I heard and saw so many incredible things. There's no way to have the space to write them all down. And then he ends his gospel by saying, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God,

and that by believing you may have life in his name. He's saying, my whole reason for writing these down is for you to get to know him, that you would believe in him and follow him, and in following him, you might have the kind of life that Jesus offers everybody. John would also write three of their books in the New Testament. Forever changed by his relationship with Jesus. He wrote this in 1 John, chapter 1. He said,

We proclaimed to you, the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes. We touched him with our own hands. He is the word of life. This is the one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him, and we now testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is, he took.

eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. We proclaimed to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we're writing these things so that you may fully share our joy. So here's John telling us on this first day of a new year, you got to get to know Jesus. You need to follow this man. We're not making this stuff up. We saw him. We touched him. We saw the calluses on his hands from years of working as a Judean carpenter. We hugged his rugged body. We sat around campfires with him.

We laughed with him. We cried. We ate. We told jokes. We listened to stories. We prayed together, sang together. And we saw him do. So many incredible things like turn water into wine and make crooked legs straight and restore sight to the blind.

We watched him drive out demons and calm storms and call a dead man out of a grave. And he came back to life himself. I'm telling you. He's the greatest person. person you will ever meet. He is life. And I'm telling you all this so that you can know that life to. Years ago, someone told me I needed to write down a life mission statement. So I thought it through, prayed about what I wanted my life to look like, and I wrote down a whole bunch of stuff. And I tried to, you know, cleverly wordsmith something. But here's where I simply landed.

I just wrote down, I want to look, love, and live like Jesus. That's it. And every new year, aside from walk more and eat fewer Cheetos, this is my resolution. I want to look, love, and live like Jesus. Been that way every year. And to do that, you got to get to know him. So that's what we're going to attempt to do. So I want you to grab a Bible or grab an app and start reading the Gospel of John. And we will take just a few minutes every day to dive into a section of it.

And hopefully, as together we look at Jesus, we will all say, man, I want to be like that guy too. So I'll see you back tomorrow for John Chapter 1. Happy New Year. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out?

For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.combe.combe.combe.