Got Fruit ?

Host Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith provides a Special Edition  of his PodCast which I would highly recommend you all take the time to listen to regarding the Purpose Driven/Seeker Sensitive “way” of doing church.

1st John 4:1-9
1Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

4You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

Grace and peace be with you.

"This I pray"
Philippians 1:9

As we come to our study of godliness in Philippians 1:9-11, we note that this passage is a prayer. Typically, Paul’s prayers reflected his concern that his readers would mature spiritually.  That is impossible without prayer because spiritual growth depends on the Holy Spirit’s power, which is tapped through prayer.

Prayer is so vital that Jesus instructed His disciples to pray at all times (Luke 18:1). Paul commands us to "pray without ceasing" (1st Thessalonians 5:17). Peter said we should be "of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer" (1st Peter 4:7).

Scripture gives many other commands to pray, but the true test of your spirituality is your compulsion to pray, not simply your obedience to commands. As a Christian you exist in a spiritual realm in which prayer is as natural as breathing is in the natural realm. Just as atmospheric pressure exerts force on your lungs, compelling you to breathe, so your spiritual environment compels you to pray. Resisting either brings devastating results.

The more you see life through God’s eyes, the more you are driven to pray. In that sense your prayers reveal the level of your spiritual maturity. Paul prayed with urgency day and night because he shared God’s love for His people and His concern for their spiritual maturity.

Examine your own prayers. Do you pray from a sense of duty or are you compelled to pray?  Do you pray infrequently or briefly?  Do your prayers center on your own needs or the needs of others?  Do you pray for the spiritual maturity of others?  Those important questions indicate the level of your spiritual maturity and give guidelines for making any needed changes in your pattern of prayer.

Suggestions for Prayer:

Thank God for the privilege and power of prayer.
If you have neglected prayer or if your prayers have been centered on yourself rather than others, confess your sin and ask God to give you a sense of holy urgency in praying as you should.

Is there someone for whom you should be praying more consistently?

For Further Study:
Read Daniel 6:1-28.

What was Daniel’s pattern of prayer?
What accusation did the political leaders bring against Daniel?
What was the king’s attitude toward Daniel?
How did God honor Daniel’s faith?

From Drawing Near by John MacArthur Copyright © 1993. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.com.

Link: http://www.gty.org/PDF/DrawingNear2182010.pdf

Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness,and sin is lawlessness.
1st John 3:4

It is a dangerous thing to live your life without a spiritual "plum line," or standard, by which you determine right from wrong.  God’s Word is that plumb line.  Spiritual laws, like physical laws, are meant to protect you, not restrict you.  You may exercise your freedom to challenge the laws of electricity, but to do so can bring you death.   Likewise, you will not break God’s laws, they will break you.  God established absolute moral and spiritual laws that we are free to ignore, but we do so at our own peril.  These laws are timeless.  Culture does not supersede them.  Circumstances do not abrogate them.  God’s laws are eternal, and they will save you from death if you follow them.

You may feel that God’s laws restrict and bind you.  On the contrary, God’s Word protects you from death (Romans 6:23).  For example, when God said that you are not to commit adultery, He wanted to free you to experience the fullest pleasure of a marriage relationship.  Furthermore, He knew the devastating heartache that would come to you, your spouse, your children, your relatives, your friends, and your church family if you broke this law.  How important the laws of God are for your life!  Without them, you would be robbed of the delights God has in store for you.

Sin is choosing a standard other than God’s law on which to base your life.  If you are measuring your life by that of your neighbors, or society at large, then you are basing your life on lawlessness, and lawlessness is sin.

Henry and Richard Blackaby
Experiencing God Day-by-Day

Colossians 2:6-8

Grace and peace be with you.

In the previous installment, God in effect – God in affect Part 1, I shared some thoughts on the idea that bad things happen because God doesn’t always intervene.  That’s not entirely accurate though.  Bad things don’t necessarily happen because God doesn’t intervene, they happen as a result (consequence) of the really bad things happening.. sin.

I’m going to take a step back today, by refreshing on two pivotal points in the history of the physical and spiritual worlds, hopefully tying these ideas together more tightly with the original thought of why bad things happen in the next installment.

IN THE PHYSICAL
Going back to Genesis and the Fall of Man, we could ask, “Where was God when Eve was being tempted by the serpent?  Why didn’t the Lord step in and crush the serpent before he even tempted Eve?”  A problem with this train of thought is that it leaves room to attempt to dodge the responsibility put on Adam and Eve.  Remember though, God gave Adam a command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil along with the reason for why He was giving the command.  Though sin (the human ailment),  hadn’t entered into the world quite yet, the text from Genesis 2 points out that evil already existed.

Genesis 2:15-17
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." 

IN THE SPIRITUAL
In Isaiah 14:12-14 & Ezekiel 28:12-18 we are given an account of something happening in the spiritual realm, that is, God dealing with Satan’s rebellion,take note of Isaiah 14:12 and Ezekiel 28:17…

Setting the record straight for Job is God saying…

Job 38:4-7
4 "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
       Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
       Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6 On what were its footings set,
       or who laid its cornerstone-

7 while the morning stars sang together
       and all the angels shouted for joy?

It’s not clear at what point angels were created or when exactly was Satan’s access to heaven revoked.  What is clear is that Satan’s rebellion, occurring before or during the seven days of creation is the earliest account of sin we know of.  What can be concluded, is that God allowed Satan and his minions to rebel, as He also allowed Adam & Eve to rebel when they exercised their choice to obey or disobey what God had commanded in the Garden of Eden.

BUILDING ON WHY BAD THINGS HAPPEN
So we ask, “Why would God allow either instance of rebellion to happen?”  An answer that seems to fit  God’s nature &  character is that for God to exert His power and will in such cases would seem to violate his very nature, that which makes Him good, just and righteous.  In short, coercion and force on the part of God to make Adam & Eve or us obey would be an act of oppression against his creation.  This is not to say that it elevates the creation above the creator, rather the Lord preserves His goodness in spite of His creation’s will to go against His will and desires.  Another view of obedience is that it is, the exercising of the option/attitude to obey vs not to obey.

As a side note:

If we begin with the belief that goodness and only goodness comes from God; and that goodness was the original order and intention of God, what options for understanding evil do we have?  While Hollywood, deep thinkers, and other “cultural” influences might have us believe that the natural order of things is to have an opposite for  “goodness”, I don’t believe this to be an accurate reflection of goodness from the Christian worldview.     

To elaborate, I don’t understand evil as being the “compliment” of good; evil existing has nothing to do with a duality of good and evil, ie; good is not dependent upon evil, it’s not a yen & yang proposition.  Evil is a way to describe that which is without goodness, ie; void of goodness. And on that abrupt note I’ll close for now.

To be continued…

Grace and peace be with you.