1. Absolute surrender to God is when you realize that you are nothing and that God is everything so you give all of who you are to God. When a person absolutely surrenders to God they will be at peace, find joy in God, patience, fruit of the Spirit Gal. 5:22-23.
2. Walking after the flesh is not always repulsive to the believer. At times it might even seem more pleasing to the Christian because the flesh makes much of us.. Paul equates waling afer the flesh with looking at his own righteous track record. Before Paul was saved he did many good and religious things for himself.
3. Sad but true a person’s ability often times becomes a liability to them spiritually because he/she is relying on his/her ability to make the righteous. We as Christians can sometimes encourage this behavior in other people by making much of their skills rather than making much of God in them.
4. I agree with Steve that trying to do something for God has bad consequences. When one does something for God, he/she is most likely motivated by a self-glorification rather than God-glorification. Therefore, God will not bless those efforts.
5. Major Sin! Sarah had Abram commit adultery with he maid! The consequences were atrocious. The maid did not really give up rights to her son. Sarah became jealous and the son was torn up because of the dysfunction of the family. History even says that Islam came from His lineage.
6. Brokenness: when a person comes to the place where they realize and feel there is nothing righteous in them and that they are totally wicked and cannot produce godliness without God saving them. I do agree with Steve because God will not give us anything that He cannot do through us.
7. God brings a person to brokenness so that that person might make much of God’s glory and share in its blessings. God allows His children to experience pain so that they can glorify Him in the midst of pain. He refines us in those times.
8. Serving God might be a distraction today because we can easily get enamored with the gifts rather than the giver.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Do You Give Thanks to the Glory of God?
"True gratitude or thankfulness to God for his kindness to us, arises from a foundation laid before, of love to God for what he is in himself; whereas a natural gratitude has no such antecedent foundation. The gracious stirrings of grateful affection to God, for kindness received, always are from a stock of love already in the heart, established in the first place on other grounds, God's own excellency."1
You might hear many people giving thanks to God, but for what reason? Perhaps people thank God for the death of Jesus Christ on the cross because to them it shows God makes much of them. Sadly enough, I think this is all too often the case. Simply put, we often give thanks to God with wrong motives. Like Jonathan Edwards says, we need not give thanks or gratitude to God because of something he has done for us for that is rooted in self-love. I.E. being enamored with the gifts rather than the giver. In fact, we need to give gratitude to God for who He is in Himself, in His character, in His excellency. That is how we fulfill 1Cor. 10:31 in giving thanks to God to the glory of God. If we fail to give thanks this way, then we are simply reverting back to the way unsaved people give thanks, namely in a self-love manner.
Listen to what James 4:3-4 says:
"3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."
Many of us are like this toward our Lord. We are like a wife who asks her husband to fund her adulterous affairs and passions. The problem is not our asking nor is it our thanking. The problem lies in our motive of thanking and asking.
I think we can take several things away from this lesson.
1. Do you even thank God?
2. Are your motives of thanking God rooted in self-love or in God's excellency?
3. Will you endeavor to purely thank God and have God centered gratitude?
3. We need to check our motives to see if they are self-oriented or God's glory oriented.
May you all have a wonderful day of thanksgiving rooted in pure grattitude to God and others.
God bless,
Michael.
1. Jonathan Edwards. Religious Affections, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 2, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, orig. 1746, p.247.
You might hear many people giving thanks to God, but for what reason? Perhaps people thank God for the death of Jesus Christ on the cross because to them it shows God makes much of them. Sadly enough, I think this is all too often the case. Simply put, we often give thanks to God with wrong motives. Like Jonathan Edwards says, we need not give thanks or gratitude to God because of something he has done for us for that is rooted in self-love. I.E. being enamored with the gifts rather than the giver. In fact, we need to give gratitude to God for who He is in Himself, in His character, in His excellency. That is how we fulfill 1Cor. 10:31 in giving thanks to God to the glory of God. If we fail to give thanks this way, then we are simply reverting back to the way unsaved people give thanks, namely in a self-love manner.
Listen to what James 4:3-4 says:
"3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."
Many of us are like this toward our Lord. We are like a wife who asks her husband to fund her adulterous affairs and passions. The problem is not our asking nor is it our thanking. The problem lies in our motive of thanking and asking.
I think we can take several things away from this lesson.
1. Do you even thank God?
2. Are your motives of thanking God rooted in self-love or in God's excellency?
3. Will you endeavor to purely thank God and have God centered gratitude?
3. We need to check our motives to see if they are self-oriented or God's glory oriented.
May you all have a wonderful day of thanksgiving rooted in pure grattitude to God and others.
God bless,
Michael.
1. Jonathan Edwards. Religious Affections, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 2, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, orig. 1746, p.247.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Response to first 3 Questions of Chapter1 in Grace Walk
1. The biblical meaning of success in the Christian life is explained by our realizing how truly evil we really are and how truly holy and awesome God is and our need for His redeeming us from our evil selves. When one comes to understand this, then I would consider them successful. The Apostle Paul put the biblical meaning of Christian success like this: “For to me to live is Christ, to die is gain.” Jesus put it like this: “The greatest in the Kingdom is the servant of all.” Most Christians have no idea that this is what biblical success in the Christian life is. Most Christians have been heavily influenced by Arminian leanings in Church practice and theology and lack a true understanding of the Gospel's necessary centrality to not only salvation but all of life after salvation.
2. The motivation-condemnation-reconciliation cycle is a very descriptive term for how most people live their Christian lives. It is particularly so in the Fundamentalistic realm of Evangelicalism. There are several problems that come from this cycle but there is one overarching issue that must be addressed and dismantled, namely a problem of motive. The motive is self! The whole cycle is based upon you and what you can do a how you can achieve God’s acceptance and grace after salvation. Secondly, people are trying to feel saved. Therefore the second problem is an existential problem. People should not base their relationship with God upon feelings! Ever! The third problem I see in this cycle is one of theology. It seems that this cycle promotes wrong theology, namely, that God expects you to keep and attain spiritual righteousness by works. Christians are called to trust not try! Trusting happens when a person comes to the understanding that they are more evil then they ever thought and completely incapable of producing anything Godly or spiritually righteous and then trusts in God’s good news of redemption!
3. 19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,
According to Galatians 3:19-25 the purpose of the law was to bring us to faith in the promise of a coming messiah that would do we can do, namely fulfill the law and pay for our failing God’s righteousness. A Christian who lives under the law is what I call religious. His/her profile is that of keeping lists in order to achieve what they deem righteous in the eyes of God. That list can be made of various great things turned evil like reading the bible, praying, going to church, winning someone to the Lord, singing a hymn, encouraging people, caring for the orphan and widow. None of these things are evil only the motive of the religious person is evil. His/her motive is evil because it seeks to satisfy oneself in what one does for God instead of simply being satisfied in God himself.
2. The motivation-condemnation-reconciliation cycle is a very descriptive term for how most people live their Christian lives. It is particularly so in the Fundamentalistic realm of Evangelicalism. There are several problems that come from this cycle but there is one overarching issue that must be addressed and dismantled, namely a problem of motive. The motive is self! The whole cycle is based upon you and what you can do a how you can achieve God’s acceptance and grace after salvation. Secondly, people are trying to feel saved. Therefore the second problem is an existential problem. People should not base their relationship with God upon feelings! Ever! The third problem I see in this cycle is one of theology. It seems that this cycle promotes wrong theology, namely, that God expects you to keep and attain spiritual righteousness by works. Christians are called to trust not try! Trusting happens when a person comes to the understanding that they are more evil then they ever thought and completely incapable of producing anything Godly or spiritually righteous and then trusts in God’s good news of redemption!
3. 19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,
According to Galatians 3:19-25 the purpose of the law was to bring us to faith in the promise of a coming messiah that would do we can do, namely fulfill the law and pay for our failing God’s righteousness. A Christian who lives under the law is what I call religious. His/her profile is that of keeping lists in order to achieve what they deem righteous in the eyes of God. That list can be made of various great things turned evil like reading the bible, praying, going to church, winning someone to the Lord, singing a hymn, encouraging people, caring for the orphan and widow. None of these things are evil only the motive of the religious person is evil. His/her motive is evil because it seeks to satisfy oneself in what one does for God instead of simply being satisfied in God himself.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
"This is shocking. The love of God is not God's making much of us, but God's saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God. True love aims at satisfying people in the glory of God. Any love that terminates on man is eventually destructive. It does not lead people to the only lasting joy, namely, God. Love must be God-centered, or it is not true love; it leaves people without their final hope of joy."
- John Piper
- John Piper
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