Romans 14:6b-9

He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks. He who doesn’t eat, to the Lord he doesn’t eat, and gives God thanks. For none of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord. Or if we die, we die to the Lord. If therefore we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died, rose, and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

When we start focusing on our own actions and convictions, it is easy to get our eyes off of the one we honor with our actions. We can become so focused on our own efforts that we start to compare our efforts with the effort of others and we miss the whole point.

The reason that we have our convictions is to honor our Lord Jesus Christ.

The reason we do them is to show Him honor and He is happy to receive what is done in His honor. You can eat in His honor or not eat in His honor. You can observe special days in His honor and you can decide to treat every day the same in His honor. The focus should be God and not ourselves or each other. Even if someone may be doing wrong, we need to remember to pray for them because Jesus died for everyone. We should be so filled with joy that we hope that they can share in our joy with us. We shouldn’t be filled with envy or boastfulness. These things don’t honor Jesus at all.

Jesus raised our lives from the dead and for that we can be thankful and have an opportunity to express it as we want to.