I originally started this blog with the intention of writing about the things God is teaching me on a daily basis. Unfortunately, in the busy-ness of life, it’s kind of gotten away from me. I have strayed a little (okay…a lot) from writing about those daily lessons, and I have suffered for it.  But lately, like I said above, I’ve had some things on my mind, and I can’t help but think they are more than just passing thoughts. There’s a reason I can’t get away from them. So I’m going to write, with the hope that I can get better about writing more frequently.

Today’s topic:

There’s a Fine Line…Between New Revelation and the Leading of the Holy Spirit

Not too long ago, I read about some comments made by pastor and author Mark Driscoll. He said that he “see[s] things…”  He has visions, he sees things vividly, like on a TV screen. The examples he gave were all visions of things happening in other people’s lives, mostly during counseling sessions – child molestation, adultery, domestic violence. He said he saw these things happening in front of him, like he was watching a movie, and he related these things back to the people he saw in them. The article I was reading was severely criticizing Driscoll, first for erroneously claiming a spiritual gift of discernment, second for claiming a “signs” gift that is common to Charismatics (though Driscoll claims to not be Charismatic), and finally, for being so explicit in his description of his visions, especially the vision of adultery.  Now, Driscoll has a reputation for being a little…crass.  He has no problem talking about explicit sexual activities to his congregation on Sunday mornings (or so I’ve heard…I’ve not witnessed this first hand, I’ve only read about it). But the thing that got my attention was that Driscoll is claiming that God is showing Him things – specific things, about specific people – thus, the Lord is giving Driscoll new revelation. Obviously this isn’t universal revelation – for the whole church – but unique and special revelation.  And everything in me, and everything I know about the Bible, tells me that this is wrong.

But then I start thinking about things…

A few years ago, I was a middle school science teacher.  I didn’t like it. It wasn’t that I didn’t like working with the kids – they were the best part of the job!  But standing up talking all day (teaching), and being responsible for the behavior of 30 teenagers (who are as irresponsible as human beings can be…), was a little too much for an introvert like me.  The job is difficult for everybody, but for me, it was unbearable. I felt like I was aging faster than my years, solely because of stress.  So I started back to school, hoping to become a Software Developer. I worked hard in my classes, and I was slated to graduate in December of 2009. The problem came when I realized that I was going to graduate in December, yet the next school year (the public school I taught at) started in August. I knew I would want to find a developer job when I graduated, but I would already be half way through the school year where I was teaching. I wasn’t the kind of person who would quit in the middle of the year and leave my students hanging.  On top of all this, my wife and I really wanted her to be able to stay home with our daughter (thus the reason I chose a well-paying career in software). So my wife and I talked about it, and we prayed about it. We begged God to show us (literally, physically show us…through a sign or something) what we should do.  It wasn’t likely that I would get a developer job before I graduated, but if I quit my teaching job in the summer, that would leave almost 6 months without me working. And my wife was going to quit, too, so we were about to start swimming up that proverbial creek with no paddle. We wanted a sign that God would take care of us.

No sign came.

But after much prayer and meditation on it, we decided that it would be a bold act of faith to quit our jobs and just trust God to provide for us. We felt a peace about it, and we told ourselves that it was the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Here’s the question – what is the difference between what we did and what Mark Driscoll did?  Mark Driscoll claimed that the Holy Spirit gave him visions. We were claiming that the Holy Spirit was leading us to make a leap of faith. Both of us are claiming to be communicated to by the Holy Spirit.  Are we both wrong?  Is there a such thing as “the leading of the Holy Spirit?”  If I don’t believe that God gives new revelation, such as “holy” visions, is it hypocritical of me to believe that He communicates with me in leading me this way or that?

Right now, I stand on this fine line, believing that the Holy Spirit does lead us.  How He does this, I can’t say. It’s scary, because if we go based on feelings (or intuition), we’re bound to screw up. I am also a strong cessationist, believing that the so-called “signs gifts”, or today called the Charismatic gifts (i.e., tongues, word of knowledge – including visions, etc.), are no longer given to believers. So where does the “leading” of the Spirit end and the beginning of new revelation begin?

Seriously, I want your feedback…  Comment away!

But today I have to offer praise to God, who knows my inner thoughts and understands how I’m feeling. Because today, He showed me that His Word contains everything I need for godly living, and He showed me that He actively intervenes in my life, often times in the most subtle of ways.  Allow me to explain…

Yesterday I was listening to a lecture over the beginning of Genesis in my Old Testament Introduction class that I’m taking.  Dr. Gibson, the instructor, was talking about Genesis 3, and the temptation in the Garden of Eden.  In his discussion of this passage, he brought up a verse from 1 John 2:16:

For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

In this passage, John lists the 3 “focal points,” if you will, of temptation:

1. Lust of the flesh
2. Lust of the eyes
3. Pride of Life

Dr. Gibson compared these to the way Satan tempted Eve in the Garden, described in Genesis 3:6:

Lust of the flesh – “Good for food…”
Lust of the eyes – “Pleasing to the eye…”
Pride of Life – “Desirable for gaining wisdom…”

He then went on to describe how these same focal points of temptation were used when Satan attempted to tempt Jesus in the wilderness (see Luke 4:1-13):

Lust of the flesh – Stones to bread…
Lust of the eyes – Kingdoms of the earth…
Pride of Life – Pinnacle of the Temple…

This is an interesting teaching, and one that deserves some real thought.  There are all kinds of ways we can apply this to our lives…

The thing that amazed me today, though, is that my normal morning Bible study – the course I am going through on the Online Bible College – was over temptation!  And even more amazing was the fact that it taught this exact same truth, about the 3 focal points of temptation listed in 1 John 2:16!  It used the same examples from the temptation of Eve in the Garden, and Jesus in the wilderness, too!  I love that God speaks to me through His Word, and that just when I need to experience Him, to see a tangible way that He is working in my life, He offers it.  Some may say that it’s just coincidence that I received teaching over a specific topic for the first time, from 2 separate sources, right at the same time. But I can’t help but think that God ordained that this would happen, right at this point in my life.  Perhaps I need this teaching right now more than ever. Only time will tell.

So what are some of the ways we can apply this to our lives?  My study this morning offered these ideas:

1. Understand temptation and the devil’s schemes (but don’t focus on them)
   • Know that our old selves, the person we were before Christ changed us, still pops it dead little head up now and then (or daily for some of us). That old self attempts to tell us that this world has something to offer, that honor and recognition in this world is something to attain, and that we should make ourselves comfortable in this world and its ways.
2. Know the victory is already won
   • Colossians 2:13-15 says “…God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”  Jesus has already defeated Satan on the Cross – the victory is won!
3. Walk in the Spirit
   • Galatians 5:16 says “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”  Here, Paul explains that if we focus on Jesus and doing the things that will draw us closer to Him (studying His Word, prayer, ministering to others), we won’t have time to give in to the temptations that surround us.
4. Avoid areas of obvious temptation
   • Andy Stanley preached a series  titled “Guardrails” (click the link…I highly recommend it!), where he talks about setting up boundaries in our lives so that we don’t fall into the traps that the devil has set for us.  The best thing we can do for ourselves is to keep ourselves from entering in to areas of known temptation.  If you’re a recovering alcoholic, don’t go to bars. It’s easier said than done, but it’s a very practical way to avoid temptation and therefore avoid the sin and guilt that goes along with it.

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**Some material today quoted from Lesson 104-13: Temptation, from the course Essential Truths I – Living with God, from the Online Bible College

This morning, I started listening to some praise and worship music at work, and I listened to a song called Hosanna, by Hillsong.  Watch the video below (or if that doesn’t work, click on the word Hosanna to be taken to YouTube, where you can watch the video and hear the song yourself).

I’m not sure what it was about the song that got me.  Maybe it was the melodic tune in minor keys, or maybe it was the pure voice of the singer, or maybe it was the God-inspired lyrics. I don’t know, but whatever it was, I couldn’t get enough. I listened to it over and over – at least 10 or 12 times.  And I’m still listening to it this afternoon.  I’m worshiping in my office!!!

I got to thinking, though, that it may not be a good thing that I am singing along with a song whose title and main lyric is a word whose meaning I don’t fully understand.  I mean, I have no doubt that it is a song of praise, based on the other lyrics in the song, but how satisfying do I think it must be to God, who knows my every thought, to know that I’m singing words to Him that I don’t even know the definition of.  Sure, He knows my motives are pure, but how much more pleasing it must be to hear me sing words that I know and understand, and therefore, fully mean when I say them!  My daughter could tell me she loves me in French, and although I might know what she is saying, if I know that she doesn’t know what she’s saying, I’m not going to take her words to heart. How could she mean words whose meaning she didn’t even know?  I’m not saying that she shouldn’t use those words, or that she shouldn’t speak in other languages. I only mean that perhaps it would be best if she learned what they meant prior to saying them.  The same goes for me in this situation – I need a little help understanding what Hosanna means before I keep singing it to God.

So I did a quick word study on hosanna.  I knew that it was a term shouted by the crowds as Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday, a week before His resurrection (see Matthew 21:9,15; Mark 11:9-10; John 12:13). And by the context, I can tell it was a term of praise.  After some study, it turns out that hosanna is a very unique word.  I like how John Piper explains it:

You all know that the New Testament was first written in Greek, and the Old Testament was first written in Hebrew. Wherever the word “hosanna” occurs in the New Testament, do you know what the Greek word is? Right! It’s “hosanna.” All the English translators did was use English letters (h-o-s-a-n-n-a) to make the sound of a Greek word.

But if you look in a Greek dictionary to find what it means, you know what you find? You find that it is really not originally a Greek word after all. The men who wrote the New Testament in Greek did the same thing to a Hebrew word that our English translators did to the Greek word: they just used Greek letters to make the sound of a Hebrew phrase. I know this sounds sort of complicated. But it’s really not. Our English word “hosanna” comes from a Greek word “hosanna” which comes from a Hebrew phrase hoshiya na.**

This Hebrew phrase, hoshiya na, is only found in one place in the Old Testament – Psalm 118:25:

LORD, save us! LORD, grant us success!

The first part is translated from the phrase hoshiya na – it is a plea for help, like someone yelling “save me!!”  Piper goes on to explain:

But something happened to that phrase, hoshiya na. The meaning changed over the years. In the psalm [118:25] it was immediately followed by the exclamation: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The cry for help, hoshiya na, was answered almost before it came out of the psalmist’s mouth. And over the centuries the phrase hoshiya na stopped being a cry for help in the ordinary language of the Jews. Instead it became a shout of hope and exultation. It used to mean, “Save, please!” But gradually, it came to mean, “Salvation! Salvation! Salvation has come!”**

The term hosanna, then, has moved from a plea for help to a term of praise.  Instead of saying “save me!!” you are saying “I’m saved!”  And when you look at the context of the crowds shouting hosanna on the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem, you can see what they meant. When they said “Hosanna to the Son of David!,” they were saying “The Son of David (a messianic phrase, by the way) is our salvation!”  And in the song Hosanna that started this whole topic of study for me, you can see what she means when she sings “I see the King of Glory, coming on the clouds with fire!  Hosanna! Hosanna in the Highest!”  What else can we say when we imagine Jesus arriving, coming in all His glory, triumphant and powerful?  We can say Hosanna!  We are saved!

**Quoted from John Piper, http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/hosanna

1. 100 degrees Fahrenheit is hot.  Very, very hot.
2. Even shade is hot in 100 degree weather.
3. 5 month old babies don’t like 100 degree weather.
4. I should be given a medal for putting up with that kind of temperature and a screaming baby at the same time.
5. My wife should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for putting up with that kind of temperature and a moaning husband at the same time.
6. My wife should be given another Nobel prize for putting up with my smell (I forgot to put on deodorant…).
7. I love doing things like this with my family.

Even in the adversity of sunscreen-infused sweat pouring into my eyes, causing them to burn like I just poured some concentrated acid in them, I can look back and say that we had a great time. We had fun – my 5 year old rode a kiddie-coaster 3 times, I got to see people dive from 30-something feet in the air, and Shamu did her thing without hurting any of the trainers. Good times…  Good times…

On to other things, I said last week that I had a great secret that I would be sharing very soon with everyone.  Well, here I go…

First, I should point out that this affects no one but my family and me.  I don’t really even know why I said I was going to tell everyone – you probably won’t care in the least bit.  But since I said I would tell, I will.

My wife and I are prayerfully considering the fact that God may be calling us into vocational ministry, specifically missions.  We have talked about it for a while, and although Amy has known for years that this is where we were most likely headed (and apparently she’s been telling me this…), I am just now figuring it out.  We don’t presume to know whether we will serve in another country or just around the block from our house, but either way, I believe we are starting to see the beginnings of God preparing us to serve Him in this new way.

To prepare, we are going to soon be starting ministry-related degrees via distance learning, and hopefully I’ll be able to start talking more about what I’m learning here on the blog.

If you come across this post, even if you don’t know us, if you get an opportunity to pray for us, we would greatly appreciate it. We are very excited about this “new chapter” in our life, and although we expect it to be a slow transition, we can hardly wait to see what God will have us doing in the future.

Anyway, here is my random list of topics for today:

Where Have I Been?

If you come around the blog here at all, you probably noticed that something is missing lately.  Specifically, blog posts.  The last post I made was on June 6th, which was a good 16 days ago.  That’s over 2 weeks!!  Or, if your a dog, it’s like half a month…

I don’t really have an excuse.  I’ve been really busy at work, and I’m always busy at home.  With a 5 month old and a 5 year old in the house, we’re always busy.  Busy, busy, busy.  Just writing that word makes me tired.  On top of this, I was writing almost daily on the Bible study series that I was going through (The Power of the Gospel), but that ended right around that time, so I ran out of stuff to write about for a while.  But have no fear, I shall return.  And I am hoping that very soon, I will have some good news to share with everyone!

What’s On My Mind?

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.  A lot of it is in direct correlation with the good news I hope to share with everyone in the next few days, and for right now, I’m keeping that a secret.  But there is one thing that I have been thinking about some that I can share, and I am sad to say that it is very negative.  I try really hard not to be a negative person, in general, and I especially try to not write negatively here on my blog.  But I have come across something that has started weighing down my heart lately, and I hope that by getting it off my chest, maybe I’ll feel better.  Or perhaps someone can share some insight on this whole thing that will help me see it in a different light.

The negative thing I am talking about is that of arrogance in our seminaries.  I have been looking at seminaries and Bible colleges lately, and the different programs that they offer. I’ve come to the realization that there are really 4 types of these institutions out there:

1. Small, inexpensive (some free…) schools that are completely unaccredited
2. Small, inexpensive schools that have religious accreditation, but not regional or government accreditation
3. Small-to-medium sized schools that are a bit more expensive, and are usually only religiously accredited
4. Large, expensive (and very well-known) schools that have religious accreditation, and (some) have regional/government accreditation

I would love to go to seminary, to receive some training in Biblical doctrine and in practical ministry.  But the system as I outlined it above really only gives me 2 choices – go to a large seminary, where my degree will be respected by any and everyone, yet be required to take out loans to pay for it (who has $10,000-$30,000 or more sitting around??).  Or, I can go to a smaller school, whose tuition I can afford outright, but whose degrees are not necessarily respected by any and everyone in the ministry-world.

My only real option is the second one…otherwise I cannot go to seminary at all.  But I hesitate to enroll, because I fear that I will end up spending a lot of time and energy pursuing a degree, only to be told later that I’ll have to go to a “real” seminary if I want to participate in the ministries of such-and-such organization.  Who decided that the big seminaries are the only “real” seminaries?  Isn’t it possible that some of these smaller schools are just as legit, yet much more accessible to the average guy? (Who still has a non-ministry job, by the way…)  Somewhere along the way, it was decided that to be taken seriously in the professional ministry world (at least in the southern baptist world), you had to have a degree from the Big 6 (Golden Gate, Midwestern, New Orleans, Southeastern,  Southern, or Southwestern).

On top of this, I recently read an article that talked about how some of these big seminaries played a role in attempting to shut down smaller schools. The article talked about the State of Texas attempting to shut down one of these smaller seminaries, saying that, because they were not regionally/government accredited, they must be a degree mill, and they couldn’t confer respectable degrees.  That case ended up going to the state supreme court, who upheld that private institutions could confer degrees under the umbrella of religious exemption, and that the state couldn’t interfere.  But do you know who was actually behind the push to get the small seminaries shut down?  The big seminaries!!!  The article said that, because the small schools charged so little tuition, it was pulling people away from attending the big seminaries, and therefore it was hurting them financially.

Whether or not this article was true, I really can’t say, and I hate to spread lies, so I pray that I haven’t done so now.  But I have enough other “insider” information on some of these big seminaries to know that they have a lot of what I call institutional arrogance.  I know about instances where people working there were mistreated, lied to, and stabbed in the back, simply because someone higher up didn’t like them or didn’t like their department.  The politics that drive everything in the administration of that seminary are worse than the politics that drive our state and federal government!  And this is supposed to be the cream of the crop!  The leaders in our denomination and the Church!  It saddens me greatly, and it makes me want to stay away from that campus, and the others that are associated with it, at all costs.

I’d like to know, what are your thoughts on this?

Okay, Enough Negative…Back to Positive

Alright, I’m done.  It’s off my chest.  On to our big plans for tomorrow and Friday.  We’re going to Sea World!  We’ve been several time, but it’s our favorite theme park!  I hope we have a great trip, and that the girls have fun. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Jesus summed up true Christianity in two phrases:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30)

and

Love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:31)

He was actually summing up the Law, but the Bible clearly states that Christianity is the fulfillment of the Law.  So, if it all has to do with Love, then we must come to some kind of understanding of what this Love really is. (Just so you know, I feel like capitalizing the word Love today…)  Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:17-18:

 And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. (emphasis added)

These short couple of verses have a lot to say about understanding God’s Love:

1. Grasping the fullness of the Love of Christ is dependent upon being rooted and established in Love
2. There is an aspect to understand Christ’s Love that involves the Church (“together with all the Lord’s holy people)
3. This Love is multidimensional (wide, long, high, deep…)

My lesson today described the multidimensional characteristic of Christ’s Love in this way:

• The first dimension – God’s Love for me/my Love for God.  It is not until we come to a revelation of God’s Love for us that we can even come into a relationship with Him. This is the “being rooted and established” part of His Love. We must fully understand God’s Love for us before we can Love Him back, and definitely before we can Love others (“We love because he first loved us” 1 John 4:19).
• The second dimension – Our Love for the Church. 1 John 4:7-8 says “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”  God’s Love is so abundant that we overflow, and that excess Love then flows from us to other believers. To not do so is to not truly love God. John goes on to say in v. 20: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”  On top of this, there is also a reciprocating action that occurs when we gather with other believers in Love – we come to a better understanding of the Love of Christ (see #2 above).
• The third dimension – Our Love for the world. Jesus told His disciples this parable in Matthew 25:
  

  Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (v. 34-40)

  There is no doubt from this passage that Jesus links our Love for Him with how we respond to the needs of those around us.** Though we can never Love God back as much as He has Loved us, we can show our Love to Him by Loving those around us.  In fact, we must do this – Paul writes that this is a debt we must continually pay.  My lesson quoted The New Testament in Modern English translation of Romans 13:8 as saying “Keep out of debt altogether, except that perpetual debt of love which we owe one another.”**

Coming to an understanding of this Love is what begins our relationship with God. Continuing in this understanding of this Love is what matures us in our faith. And showing this Love to others – both the Church and the world – is what proves that we are true believers, because when Christ truly resides inside you, His Love will overflow and this will show up in our Love for others.

This is the basis for the 4th quarter of the Gospel – that Chris lives through us.  And more specifically, His Love flows through us.

When we talked about the earlier parts of the Gospel, especially the second quarter, we talked a little about the acts of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. An example of some of the acts of the flesh are listed in Galatians 5:19-21:

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

Jesus taught about this as well, but He gave us an idea of where these acts come from:

For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Matthew 15:19)

What Jesus says is that these things come from an overflow of what is in your heart. The lesson puts it this way: “What festers inside a person’s heart will eventually be expressed in some form or fasion for others to see.”** Using what we’ve learned about the earlier parts of the Gospel, we might say that the acts of the flesh come from an overflow of the Old Self.

So if an overflow of the Old Self causes the acts of the flesh to appear, you’ve probably already guessed that an overflow of the New Self causes the Fruit of the Spirit to appear in our lives. The Bible uses terms like abundance (John 10:10), and superlative terms like immeasurable (Ephesians 3:20), surpassing (2 Corinthians 3:8), and inexpressible (1 Peter 1:8) to describe the life and blessings that we have in our New Life in Christ. If this life is so abundant, to the point that it is overflowing, where does this overflow go?  It goes to others!  God gives us more than we need so that we can share it with others!**

A Ministry Metaphor

In John 7, it says

Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (v. 38-39, emphasis added)

The lesson points out that the Scripture Jesus is referring to comes from the book of Isaiah:

For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. (Isaiah 44:3)

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning and will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. (Isaiah 35:5-7)

So, just as John points out, and Isaiah writes about, this river of living water is the Holy Spirit, and we are to be filled with the Spirit daily. The lesson points out:

The living water Jesus spoke about was never meant to be just for you. It was meant to become “streams of living water” flowing out from you to others. This is the nature of ministry. What you have is what you give. Out of the overflow of your experience in God, you now minister to others.**

A Broken-Ministry Metaphor

In Jeremiah 2:13, God says:

My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

A cistern is not a well or a source of water - it’s more like a storage tank for water. The water has to be moved in from somewhere else. What God is accusing them (us) of is taking blessings from Him, and then going and attempting to live in their (our) own strength and ability. But this is not how God designed it.  He knows that our “cisterns” are broken – they leak!  We go to church on Sunday morning, and then by later that day, or Monday at the latest, the joy, peace, comfort, hope, and love, which God lavished on us through His Spirit, has all leaked out. We have nothing to share with those around us.  Instead, we should be filled anew every morning, from the spring of living water – a spring, which is a source of water, and in this case never runs dry.  When we are filled, God doesn’t just give us what we need, he over-fills us so that the excess can be shared with those around us.

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**Taken from Lesson 18: God of the Overflow, from The Power of the Gospel, OBC

When God created mankind, way back in the day, He had plans for us. Of course, He knew and decreed everything that would happen, but He still had intentions for us.  Because He is God, and because He is sovereign, those intentions will still come to fruition. But between the time He created us and that point in the future when His overarching plan becomes a reality, many other things have occurred and will occur that are not directly in line with His final intentions for His creation.  His original plan for His human creation was to make us like Him.  We were supposed to “take part in the divine nature”:

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:3-4, emphasis added).

I don’t take this to mean we will be made into gods, like some religions teach (I won’t mention any names, but they start with an “M”), but that we will in our natures be more godly. We will take on some of the attributes of God, specifically becoming more holy as He is holy. To say otherwise is to agree with Satan, who told Adam and Eve in the Garden “God knows that when you eat from it [the forbidden tree] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Satan told the truth and a lie in one statement here – eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would open their eyes, and they would be able to discern good and evil like God did, but he framed it in such a way as to make Adam and Eve think that they would be gods in their own right. He convinced them that they could be the gods of their own lives, and that they didn’t need God.

This is Great Lie that Satan has been spreading for thousands of years. He has convinced people to focus on themselves and to forget about God.  Or at times, He has convinced people to focus on themselves in a vain attempt to please God, which really isn’t pleasing to Him at all. People have been falling for this lie, living self-centered, self-gratifying lives and practicing self-effort in an attempt at self-righteousness, thus why I say that everyone has been living a lie.

This lie affects nonbelievers:

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4, emphasis added)

Satan blinds people to the truth of the Gospel, so that they never come to a revelation of the saving grace of God.  But he also uses the Great Lie to affect Christians.  We’ve been talking about the Gospel in relation to us as believers, and how it not only has to do with the forgiveness of our sins (the first quarter of the Gospel), but also with the freedom from the power of sin (the second quarter) and walking in the Spirit as a new creation (the third quarter).  The way Satan uses his Great Lie to affect believers is to keep us from understanding the whole truth of the Gospel – all four parts (the last part we’ll talk about later).

The way Satan blinds us to the whole truth of the Gospel is the same as how he blinds people from the coming to faith in Christ in the first place – he gets them to take their eyes off of God and place their focus back on themselves. One way I see this occuring a lot among believers nowadays is in how they focus so much on the lie.  They spend all their time focusing on those things that they believe are bad or wrong (i.e., dancing, going to the movies, drinking alcohol, etc.), and they end up taking their focus off of God. They sink back into a legalistic lifestyle, riddled with self-effort, all in an attempt to “not be duped by the devil.”  The sad thing is, they already have been.

The lesson today pointed out that our walk with the Lord is simple. If we want to know if something is bad for us or wrong, we can ask one simple question – “Does it distract my focus off God?”  If so, you have your answer.  The way the lesson summed it up was this:

The “new way of the Spirit,” however, has condensed your requirements down to just one: Keep close to God. It is out of this life in the Spirit that the fruit of the Spirit are expressed. As long as you have your eyes fixed on Jesus and obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the dynamic of grace will empower you to live a life pleasing to God.**

And this, my friends, is living a truth.  Or better put, it’s living the truth, day by day.

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**Taken from Lesson 16: Exposing the Lie, from The Power of the Gospel, OBC

Undeserved Favor

When we say that grace is the undeserved favor of God, we mean that He has shown us mercy even though there was nothing in us to cause Him to do so.  To explain why that is, we’d have to go into a long discussion of sin and depravity. But to keep things simple, we just need to understand that our sin created a debt that we owed to God, but because He loved us so much, He sent His son to pay our sin debt.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved (Ephesians 2:4-5, emphasis added)

This side of grace is the side that relates to the first half of the Gospel – the side dealing with the Old Me.

Enabling Power

God’s grace also empowers us to walk in the Spirit on a day to day basis. It gives us the ability to do what we cannot do ourselves.  In Acts 4, it tells of the Apostles:

With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. (v. 33, emphasis added)

Here it uses the term grace in relation to the power of the Holy Spirit, giving the Apostles boldness to preach the Gospel in the face of adversity. This side of grace is the side that relates to the second half of the Gospel – the side dealing with the New Me.

Grace in Practice – Humility

Both James (James 4:6) and Peter (1 Peter 5:5) quote Proverbs 3:34 in their letters:

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. (emphasis added)

Therefore, in order to have God’s favor and power in our lives, we must live in humility. We often think that humility is a lack of arrogance, but that isn’t always the case. I am not an overly arrogant person, but I still deal with my own form of pride, called false humility. I live with a poor self-image, which is nothing more than a wounded pride. It’s still pride. So humility, then, is not thinking less of yourself – it’s thinking of God more. It’s being God-centered instead of self-centered.

Grace in Practice – Good Works

A very confusing passage of Scripture is Ephesians 2:8-10. It starts by saying:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. (v. 8-9)

Then in the very next verse it says:

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (v. 10)

The confusion is lifted once we realize where the good works are coming from. The works we are called to do are works of grace, not works of self-effort. We are supposed to be disciplined and self-controlled. But this comes from the Spirit of God, not our own efforts to be righteous.

Grace in Practice – Boasting

Perhaps the best part of my lesson today was the closing paragraphs. It talked about boasting – grace takes away all opportunity to boast in ourselves (no self-righteousness and no self-effort). Paul teaches this in a lot of different places in his writing, but he also writes “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31).  Boasting in the Lord is a natural outworking of grace in our lives.  As my lesson put it:

When our boasting is before God, we call this praising God.When our boasting is to other Christians, we call it encouraging. And when our boasting is to those who have not yet discovered the grace of God, it is called witnessing.**

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**Taken from Lesson 15: The Dynamic of Grace, from The Power of the Gospel, OBC

These two lessons from The Power of the Gospel are titled Walking in the Spirit and The Momentum of the Spirit.  In case you’re new around here, let me explain the overall purpose of the course and where these lessons fit in.

This course is over the Gospel, but not just the simple message that Christ died, was buried, and rose again. Although this message is the foundation for the Gospel, this course goes into what this means for our lives, both before we come to Christ, and afterwards. Often times, we are only taught a part of the Gospel, usually the part that says that, because Jesus died for our sins, we are forgiven and have the hope of eternal life. But the Gospel message also says that Christ died as us, meaning that our old selves were crucified on the cross, and sin no longer has power over our lives.  The lesson put it this way:

“We have seen how, in the first quarter of the Gospel, God dealt once for all with your sins – the individual acts of sin that separated you from God. And we have also seen how, in the second quarter of the Gospel, God dealt ruthlessly with your old self – the factory that kept producing those sins in your life.”**

These two quarters of the Gospel are the parts that deals with the Old Me, and they were dealt with by Christ’s crucifixion.  The rest of the Gospel deals with the New Me, the new creation I am in Christ Jesus. The third quarter of the Gospel, which is what is described in the two lessons we will look at today, is the part that “describes how God has designed for you to live the Christian life.”** The Bible calls this new way of living walking in the Spirit.

What is Walking in the Spirit?

The first lesson (yesterday’s) explains what is meant by the phrase walking in the Spirit. Basically, there are two ways we can live after we have accepted Christ – by walking in the Flesh, or by walking in the Spirit. The first way, walking in the Flesh, means living your life for yourself. Everything revolves around Self, and your focus is always your Self. A person walking in the flesh always tends to gravitate toward one of two lifestyles: self-gratification or self-effort. In Galatians 5:19-21, Paul lists the “acts of the flesh”:

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like…

These are the acts that someone focused on self-gratification would engage in. Interestingly, when Paul wrote about these things, he was writing to a church – a body of believers. So the people he was warning about this kind of living were supposedly believers. We often call these kinds of people “Carnal Christians,” because they profess Christ but live for their own pleasures. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the Bible leaves any wiggle room here – these people are not true believers. Paul even says so in the next verse: “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:22). This is scary for me, because I believe I have fit in to this category most of my (supposedly) Christian life.

Another way that people walk in the Flesh is through self-effort. This is what Paul was addressing in Romans 7 when he said “we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” (v. 6, emphasis added). Living by the way of the written code is trying to please God by means of good works. I find it interesting that someone trying to please God on his own efforts is roped in with someone who commits acts of the flesh mentioned above – both are seen as wicked!  But how could someone who wants to please God be as wicked as someone who only wants to please himself?  The truth is that someone trying to gain righteousness through self-effort isn’t really trying to please God – God has said how to please Him – through faith! (see Hebrews 11:6) Faith focuses on God and His wisdom and His strength. But self-effort focuses on my strength and my wisdom. Walking in the Flesh is all about doing what I want or doing it my way. It says that I am the god of my own life. The only alternative (and the correct way to live as a believer) is to walk in the Spirit.

“Walking in the Spirit means allowing God’s Spirit to tell you how to think and how to act.”**  Romans 8:9 says “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.” Notice that walking in the Spirit is all about focus – focusing on God, His wisdom, His strength. It is living by faith in Him. It is evidenced by producing good fruit.  Jesus said “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit” (John 15:5).  Remaining in Jesus is all about focusing on Him and pursuing Him. It’s about making Him the center of your life, and the fruit you bear are “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control…” (Galatians 5:22-23).

How Do We Walk in the Spirit?

The only way to walk in the Spirit is to have had a revelation of the finished work of the Cross, to respond through repentance, and to then begin living in the reality of your walk in the Spirit.  These can be summared with the following Scriptures:

• Revelation – “…our old self was crucified with him…The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:6, 10-11)  We must understand that we have died to sin, and our new life is in God.
• Repentance – “…put off your old self…be made new in the attitude of your minds; and…put on the new self” (Ephesians 4:22-24) This is a conscious decision to stop walking in the flesh (described above) – not to kill off the flesh (God already did that, and that would be self-effort), but to just put it off. And on top of this, we must put on the new – a conscious decision to be who God has made us to be in Christ.
• Reality – “…through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death…those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires…the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace…” (Romans 8:2, 5-6). The lesson summed up this point by saying “Today I will access the grace and power of the Holy Spirit to live a life pleasing to God.” **

Walking in the Spirit is a daily operation – it starts over every morning, it carries on throughout the day, and it comes to a climax at the end of the day.  The Christian life is a daily walk – we must pray daily, read God’s Word daily, forgive daily, take up our Cross daily. These things were things I always knew I needed to do, and I continually tried. I would read the Bible, or take up some kind of study. I would keep a prayer journal and try to pray regularly. But the truth is, I was only doing these things out of self-effort. I was trying to be the person I thought I was supposed to be before God. And at the same time, I would continually live by walking in the flesh. There was a huge disparity between what I wanted to do and what I was actually doing. Interestingly, I have learned through these lessons that what I should be doing is walking is in the Spirit on a daily basis. Sure, this means doing the same things I was trying to do before – Bible study, prayer, etc. – but all of a sudden the effort it took to do them was gone. I now wanted to do these things!

I know this post is getting long, so I’ll finish up by listing the things that we should engage in daily as we walk in the Spirit:

1. Start in prayer – our day should begin with a prayer of thanksgiving, a prayer expressing your desire to walk with Him that day
2. Worship – activities that move our focus to Him, and place Him on a pedestal in our life
3. Bible study – God’s Word is His way of talking to us – the best way to hear from Him is to read His word. This is as much a devotional meditation as it is a study of Scripture.
4. Continue in prayer - pray for God’s grace, power, and wisdom for yourself. Join God in prayer to see His will and purpose performed in your life and others
5. End in prayer – Deal with issues from the day (sin, etc.) before the day ends. Let your prayer be an “amen” to your whole day of prayer.

I think it’s obvious that the thing that stands out the most here is prayer. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – it is impossible to be close to God without a rich prayer life.

I think it’s interesting that Paul says in Galatians 5:16: “ walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” By walking in the Spirit, it actually helps us resist temptation to sin! And on top of this, the lesson points out that if we continue in this habit of walking in the Spirit on a daily basis, it becomes habit (as anything you do on a regular basis does), and this habit creates momentum that helps us live by walking in the Spirit on a daily basis. It might seem hard at first (you may miss a day here and there), but as you keep going, that momentum builds up, and you soon are at the point to where you can’t make it through the day without doing the things that signify your walking in the Spirit.
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**Taken from Lessons 13 & 14: Walking in the Spirit and The Momentum of the Spirit; from The Power of the Gospel, OBC