Journal for Week 11

I decided to be ahead of schedule this time and post my journal for this week early!

- The Israelites needed to keep their mountaintop experience with them after they left the wilderness and went into Canaan. They could not stay at the mountain forever, they had to move on, but they had to remember and put into practice everything they had learnt on the mountain. In the same way, my year at The Crossing is like my ‘mountain top experience.’ I need to remember and put into practice what I am learning here. Everything I am learning is of no use if it stays here, I need to apply it and live it.

- God is unchanging and this is an attribute unique to God. God never changes for me, rather I change for Him (and through Him). This means that He always feels the same towards me no mater what I do because I am covered by Christ’s righteousness! And therefore, I can take courage in the fact that God is constant.

- Through His covenant with Abraham, Abraham had all that God is and God had all that Abraham was. This means that, since I have been grafted onto the family of Abraham, I am also part of this covenant and I have all that God is and He has all that I am!

- If I am a true soldier of God, the devil will come against me. And he will likely come in the same way as The Rabshakeh came to the Israelites in Isaiah 36 by making me assume I am out of God’s will when in fact God wants me to run directly to Him. The devil may use a little bit of truth to deceive me so I need to know God’s word so that I can tell the truth from a lie or a part-truth.

- A Christian will not be perfect the day after they are converted. And yet, we tend to immediately put restrictions on new Christians of what they should and should not do. Instead, we need to trust that God will work out the good work He has begun.

- God doesn’t want me to be committed to Him because that implies that I am still in control. Instead, He wants me to surrender to His life in me. As a Christian, I should be identified by Christ in me, but too often, I identify myself by what I do and don’t do.

- I need to be focused on the character of Christ rather than on the giants in my life. Whether circumstances are easy or hard is irrelevant because with God, all things are possible! If I focus on the circumstance rather than on Christ, I will come to wrong conclusions about Christ.

- There are two attitudes that will keep me from entering Canaan (the fullness of life available in Christ): an “I can do it myself” attitude and a “can’t I just have a little bit of Egypt?” attitude.

- Learning about apologetics is important so that I will be able to properly answer questions and so that I can be sure of what I believe. But I have to remember that debates won’t convert people, but instead I need to live in a way that can only be explained by Christ in me.