Journal Week 15

- When involved in public speaking, I need to approach the task with particular attention and prayer because it is teachers who will be judged most severely. I need to make sure that I am pointing people to Christ.

- Any ritual, even rituals that God ordained, is void of meaning and power if God is not in it. The rituals are merely symbols and are nothing on their own. When I start to rely on the ritual and not on God to whom the ritual points and of whom the rituals speak, I will be running towards failure.

- Hardships will reveal whether God is really in me and whether I rely on God alone.

- Integrity means “the same all the way through.” As Proverbs 28:23 says, I need to be truthful in all I do and say – loving, but truthful.

- When I serve people, ultimately, they will let me down, but when I serve God, He will always be faithful.

- My “letters of recommendation” are the fruit that is bourn in my life. Because human nature can never be changed, if there is any real change in people’s lives, it must be of God. So for Paul, the Corinthians were his letter because their lives had been genuinely changed showing that it was not Paul’s doing, but God’s doing through Paul.

- When God changes us, it is not to make us better, shinier people because that would then remove our need of Him. Instead, it is to make us reflect His perfect glory more and more (2Cor 3:18).

- If I (or the church) opts to ‘sell’ Christianity on the basis of its benefits, people will accept Jesus solely on the basis of what He can do for them (instead of what they can do for God) and as soon as the benefits are gone, they will want their money back. I need to tell others the whole truth about the gospel. And if the message of the gospel is veiled for them, that is too bad, I cannot change it!

- If I understand something after class, it is not by explanation but by revelation. Therefore, when something new and fresh is revealed to me, I need to thank God right then and there because He did it! And do I ever have a lot to be thankful for!!!

- I need to check myself under pressure. In normal circumstances, both the wise man’s house and the foolish man’s house appear identical. But under pressure, only the house built on the sand crumbles. It is pressure that reveals what is truly inside me. It is not my problems that are the problem, but the way I experience the problems.

- It is when we are faced with trials that we discover if our Christianity is language or life. The natural reaction to circumstances that seem bigger and stronger than me is fear, but I need allow God to work in me and teach me in the situation.

- Although I am in the world, I am not of it. So I need to be careful not to be unequally yoked because this could lead to compromise.