Insights – Nov 17

Someone has said, “a belief is what you hold; a conviction is what holds you.” A conviction is not truly a conviction unless it includes a commitment to live by what we claim to believe. A commitment is not a vow but a resolution – a determined purpose to live by God’s word as He applies it to our lives. First we need a commitment to holiness as a total way of life. We must decide that holiness is so important to God that it deserves priority attention in our lives. We must commit ourselves to obeying God in all of his commands. We cannot pick and choose according to our own values. An unforgiving spirit towards someone else is sin just as much as murder. All sin is offensive to God. The measure of sin is not just in its effect upon our neighbor, but in its affront to the majesty and holiness of a sovereign God.

Sin is serious to God, and it becomes serious business to us when we reflect upon the fact that every sin, regardless of how seemingly insignificant it appears to us, is an expression of contempt towards the sovereign authority of God.

Jerry Bridges.

Materialistic Mindset

We all know how subtle the materialistic temptations are and how convincing the rationalizations. Only by God’s grace and with great effort can we escape the shower of luxuries which has almost suffocated our compassion. All of us face this problem. In all honesty we have to ask ourselves: Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? Dare we care more about obtaining a secure economic future for our family than for living an uncompromisingly Christian lifestyle?…..We have been brainwashed to believe that bigger houses, more prosperous businesses, more luxurious gadgets, are worthy goals in life. As a result, we are caught in an absurd, materialistic spiral. The more we make, the more we think we need in order to live decently and respectably. Somehow we have to break this cycle because it makes us sin against our needy brothers and sisters and therefore, against our Lord. And it also destroys us. Sharing with others is the way to real joy.

Doing right

Faithfully pleasing God is an activity, not just a nice set of beliefs. It must be a way of life. Even for many people who have an enormous amount of Bible knowledge, God makes little difference in how they actually live their lives. If Christ doesn’t make any difference in my ethics and values at my job; if He doesn’t affect my speech and attitudes towards co-workers; if he makes absolutely no difference in the way I live and work, then, what difference does He make? What’s the point of playing a religious game that is all talk and no action?
Whenever you’re exposed to Scripture, ask yourself: How can I apply this to my life? What practical thing can I do to embed this truth in my attitude, character, and behavior? Where does it need to make a difference? That’s a commitment to life change.

Study the Bible

Charles Finney said, “I have so much to learn from my Bible. I find it like a deep mine, the more I work it, the richer it grows. We must pause and pray over it, verse after verse, and compare part with part, dwell on it, digest it, and get it into our minds, till we feel that the Spirit of God has filled us with the spirit of holiness.

Will you lay your heart open to God, and not give him rest, till he has filled you with divine knowledge? Will you search the scriptures? Read the Bible. Study the Bible”

Live by the word of God

Are you born again? Born of God, by his word and Spirit?
Then you are a son of God. Jesus has given you a right to become a son of God. Behold what manner of love the father has lavished upon us that we should be called the sons of God. Now are we the sons of God, what we shall be is not yet known.
Jesus as the prototype of the children of God is our fore-runner. Our example. When the devil tempted him to fill his stomach by a miracle turning the stones in to bread, He replied that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. That is how children of God are to live – by the word of God.
I value the word of God. I listen to God, I keep the sayings of God in my heart and do it. Recognizing that I am a child of God and that I am not only in this physical world but also a citizen of heaven, I need to feed my spirit with God’s word or I cannot live in a manner that pleases my heavenly father.
How valuable is the word to you? Will you go on without a regular diet of the word? Make up your mind to meditate, memorize, and make the word of God the most important thing in your life. Jesus is the word of God. Let us live for him and by him.

Sin and grace

The law came through Moses. But the fact is, nobody could keep it, which explains the statement Paul made in Romans 5:20 that says “sin increased.” The law arouses sin, so how can this stop? What is the answer? It is found in the same verse: “…but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…”

Where sin overflowed, grace flooded in. Where sin measurably increased, grace immeasurably increased. Where sin was finite, grace was infinite. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds. The sin identified by the law in no way stopped the flow of God’s grace.

Jesus’s death on the cross was the sufficient payment for sin, putting grace into action that was not simply adequate but abundant…God in grace, offers you the free gift of forgiveness. All you should do is take it. Don’t confuse the issue of salvation. It is yours strictly as God’s free gift. The emphasis is not on what we do for God; instead it is on what God has done for us.

The only way?

Who is the rock on whom God’s salvation is built?
This is what the Lord GOD says:
“I will put a stone in the ground in Jerusalem, a tested stone. Everything will be built on this important and precious rock. Anyone who trusts in it will never be disappointed.” Isaiah 28:16

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6
Jesus did not merely show the way to God; he said, “I am the way.” He did not claim merely to know the truth; He said, “I am the truth” He did not merely point to the abundant life; He said “I am the life”
Therefore, if there is no Christ, there is no way to God, no truth about God and no vitality.
How could Jesus make such claims?
If He was only a man, His claims are preposterous. But if He is who He claims he is, and if he did what he said he would do, his claims make sense. Jesus claimed to be God and to have come to earth to die for our sin. We deserve to die for our own sin, but Jesus died in our place. He who was sinless accepted the guilt of our sin and died for us. No one else could do it, but He did. Thus He literally became the door by which sinful men and women can approach the Father.

Insight from Acts 1

All true Chrisians believe that Jesus Christ is coming again. They may differ in their views of when certain promised events will occur, but they all agree that He is returning as He promised. Furthermore, all Christains agree that this faith in future glory ought to motivate the church…because we do not know the day or the hour of our Lord’s return, we must constantly be ready. The believer who starts to neglect the “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) will gradually develop a cold heart, a worldly attitude and an unfatithful life (Luke 12:35-48)….

Not only should this expectant attitude make a difference in our conduct, but it should also make a difference in our witness… since this is the day of salvation, we must be diligent to do all we can to win the lost…we must understand that the Bible teaches about God’s program for this present age, and we must be motivated by love for the lost (2 Corinthians 5:14) and a desire to be pleasing to Him when he returns.

Warren Wiersbe

Insight on faith

Faith is man’s response to God’s initiative…
To realize that faith is your response to something God does or says, will take pressure off you and enable you to adopt a more constructive attitude to it. Do not look inside yourself and ask, “How much faith do I have?” Look to God and ask, “What is he saying to me? What would he have me do?” When Jesus praised the great faith of different men and women in the gospels, he was not praising a mystical inner state. He was usually commenting on a concrete action by which someone responded to him…
Once you understand this you will also begin to see why the amount of faith you have is a less crucial issue than you might have thought. The saying of Jesus about the grain of mustard seed begins to make sense…
How much faith did Martha need to get Lazarus back from the dead? Precious little (Jn 11:38-40). If we are to go by mystical inner states, every evidence points to Martha having no faith at all. No, what she needed (and what she had) was enough faith to give orders for the tombstone to be moved, in spite of the doubts she felt. And Lazarus was raised from the dead…
Faith then is your decision to respond to God’s word. The decision may either manifest itself in some outward action or else in what we might call an “interior action” like the committing of your eternal destiny into the hands of Christ. In time the decision grows into an attitude, an attitude of always being ready to respond positively to God’s word.

John White.

About the incarnation of God

I believe that Jesus is the incarnation of God; but some believe there have been more than one incarnations.
I do not believe that there have been more than one incarnation. What was the need of them? It is true that many men have come in the name of God, some have been genuinely raised by God to bring his blessing into the world. Others have come on their own. False prophets and teachers. But God came only once as a man ad in Jesus Christ did all that was required to save men forever, if they will turn to Him and trust in Christ. And He has revealed all the truth that is required about Himself, and man, and the way to God. We do not need any other incarnation. Why would God do what neither He nor we have any use for?