- Christ came to live in me and through me. I have been so focussed on the ‘through me’ aspect that I have been neglecting the ‘in me’ part. God has been reminding me that I need to allow Him to fill me up with Himself, with His love, His faithfulness, and all that He is before He can use me to reach others. He needs to become my only focus.
- Jesus used four ‘steps’ in discipling his disciples: evangelizing, establishing, equipping, and extending. He taught them in a hands-on way, not just telling them what to do but showing them and letting them do what He had asked of them. This is the same method that I can use to disciple younger Christians. But first, I need to go deeper with God, without worrying about the breadth of my ministry because as I draw near to God, He will deal with it.
- With all the great men and woman of the scripture, we find they were all great people of prayer, “Without God, I cannot, and without prayer, God will not.” I realized this week that I have not been spending enough time in prayer. This needs to be my main priority and I need to give God my best time.
- Just as everything I will ever be was genetically present at the moment I was conceived in my mother’s womb, everything I will ever be as a Christian was placed in my when I accepted Jesus as my saviour. He has given me a new identity, but it will take time and effort to grow into all God wants me to be. I therefore need to be diligent about spending time with my creator and getting to know my saviour. My fleshly self is a sinful descendant of Adam, but my spiritual self died on the cross with Christ and therefore I now live, but “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20) My future has also changed. The future of the flesh is uncertain, but my new self is filled with certain because my hope lies in the fact that I am a joint heir with Christ!
- The Christian life isn’t hard, it’s impossible. But Jesus will do the impossible through me if I will obey. His direction always guarantees His provision. Everything Christ did was to enable us to live or His glory.
- “Unless we give real content to the wrath of God, unless we hold that men really deserve to have God visit upon them the painful consequences of their wrongdoing, we empty God’s forgiveness of its meaning” (Leon Morris). Jesus died once for all to pay the penalty for my sin (dealing with my ‘disease’) and He rose again to give me new life (dealing with my state of spiritual death) and with it the power to live by faith. By understanding who I have become (a new creation and daughter of the King!), sin looses its appeal.
- My motivation for living as Christ would have me live needs to be simply because I love Him, not to try to earn acceptance, otherwise this is legalism. My power to live as Christ would have me live needs to come from Christ Himself indwelling me, otherwise I am doing it on my own power and am enslaved to the law.
- Upon conversion, the Holy Spirit transformed me, made me set apart, and sealed me. Now, the Holy Spirit is continuing to work in me by teaching me, empowering me to do what He asks, and leading me. He also intercedes for me when I don’t know how to pray, He is communicating to the Father on my behalf.
- I need to live in complete dependency on God. I still reside in a sinful body which will take over if I allow sin to reign. So I need to keep my relationship with God as my first priority because it is only by His strength in me that I can “not carry out the desires of the flesh”(Gal 5:16).
No comments:
Post a Comment