So here’s something you may or may not know about me: I love the British Monarchy! I have been blogging about them for quite some time, and have been doing a podcast about them for about 4 months now! The podcast is what brings me here to you today.
The synopsis of the show is this: take something about the British royals and apply it to our lives as the royal family of God. So far we’ve talked about Duchess Catherine, Prince George, Royal Vacations and a host of other things. But today, well, today’s is pretty exciting because it’s got something to do with cake. And I love cake.
As a new thing (and inspired by my husband’s podcast), I’m going to share with you a transcript of the podcast, so that if you’re interested in reading about said topic but either don’t have time to listen, don’t have a way to download podcasts, or really hate my voice, you can enjoy it here. Or you can try it once and see if this podcast is for you! Either way I’d appreciate your feedback so I can know the direction to take this podcast in!
If you do want to listen to more Royal Family Podcast episodes, you can find them all here. Until then, here’s a transcript of today’s episode!
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Today is an exciting day to be a royals fanatic! April 21st is the Queen Mums birthday!! So, happy Monday and happy birthday, huh?! All of Britain will likely be celebrating this glorious day and all of the weird people like me will be too! And why not? Birthdays are exciting! It’s not like you’ve forgotten your birthday have you? Of course not! Because birthday are milestones, especially as a royal.
The premise of this particular podcast is that we’re royals, too, so you know where this is going. We all have a royal birthday, and it’s a very exciting day! There may not be cake (which always makes things amazing), but there is something greater than cake (which must be pretty awesome, am I right?): we get the remission of sins.
You see, when we become a part of the royal family, we get a new birthday, because we become a new person. Read with me from Romans 6, verses 1-4:
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
When we were baptized into the royal family of God, we became a new person. We were born again, just as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3 that one must be in order to be saved. And, if you’re born, you have a birthday! So the day you entered into Christ Jesus (through baptism), you got a new birthday! Pretty exciting, huh?! Two birthdays? Maybe we should do cake!
It isn’t just a birthday celebration, though. It isn’t like an actual, physical birthday in that you do nothing but exist and people celebrate that. No, your Christian birthday requires more than just existing. It requires a complete lifestyle change. Here’s what 2 Cor. 5:17 says,
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
Colossians 3 expounds upon some of the old, sinful things that have been done away as part of this new birth process. In verses 5, 8 and 9, Paul writes, “Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry., But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds,”
Obviously it takes work, not mere existence, to put off some of these very tempting things! What about those speech sins? James writes and says that taming the tongue is nearly impossible! Most every person struggles with saying things they ought not, which means that we are to always work toward having pure speech, and you can’t work on something if you’re merely existing.
We know that Jesus doesn’t just approve of this mere existence life. As new creatures, His new creatures, He expects we do things for Him. Galatians 2:20 tells us that we now live AS Christ. In Revelation 3, He rebuked the Laodiceans for being lukewarm—or, as we’ve been saying today, for simply existing — for thinking that after they had their new, spiritual birthday, they could simply do nothing and be praised for that. Clearly that isn’t acceptable for a Christian, because Jesus said, “So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,I will vomit you out of My mouth.”
If you don’t want to make Jesus sick, you won’t slack off after your new birthday.
The Queen mum is being celebrated across the globe today, simply for getting older. Regardless of what she did, how she acted, or if she even did anything at all, people celebrate her birthday. A Christian birthday is different. When the calendar rolls around to that fateful day that you put on Jesus Christ in baptism and became a new creature, it is a reminder that you have to DO something. You have to live differently. You don’t simply get to exist as a Christian and expect praise. Instead, you must do the will of the Father, all day every day.
