So, I was uploading different people's lessons from the year and from the dorm, and I realized that I had not uploaded my own.
The greatest thing that I have learned this year is the fact that God desires fellowship with us. When we read in I John, we read about living in the light. John uses the word "walking," a Greek idiom meaning the manner one conducts their life. The goal of walking in the light is not found in being holy, or even being like God. The goal of walking in the light is to be with God. We are told that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and that we can walk in the light and have fellowship with other Christians in the light. But, why is that possible? Because, as John tells us, our fellowship is with Him, Jesus Christ.
As these words rang in my mind, the Lord began to teach me that this was the reason for chastening. Why should we grateful for the chastening of the Lord? Because it is God's method of rmoving the darkness from our hearts and filling us with His light. All this, in a effort to draw us closer to Himself.
I love the Lord because He desires fellowship with us and will mold us to bring us unto Himself to eternally walk in the light, as He is in the light.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Joel Burdine
Jesus described the good news of the Gospel in terms of a new birth. In our old nature with our wicked hearts, man is incapable of keeping God’s law. The things of God and the precepts of God hold no delight for him. Because of man’s depraved and debased desires, man is content to simply squander away his life in meaningless, sinful desires. Even if a man desires to do good to some extent, he will always do it with the wrong motive or his desire for evil will be far greater. The problem with man has always been what he desired. That is why even when we look at Israel, we see a people who apart from regeneration unable to keep his law. We here Moses, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all making appeals to Israel to be born again, or “circumcise their heart” and not just their flesh (Deuteronomy 10:6, Jeremiah 4:4, Ezekiel 18:31).
This is the good news of the Gospel and the promise of the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36) that God would give His people a new heart and the Holy Spirit to enable them to keep His law and to obey Him. This was one of the reasons that Jesus came to die, to purchase for His people the benefits of the New Covenant.
This having been said, the new birth in the believer is followed by a change in action. When God saves us and gives us a new heart, we start the process of sanctification whereby we are sanctified without the goal in sight of being conformed to the image of Christ. As the Holy Spirit works through us, He produces fruit, such as the fruit described in Galatians 5. Some people mistake this passage to be things that we are to work at producing in our life when really they are things that the Holy Spirit produces in us. The only thing we need to do to produce is to make sure we are attached to the True Vine.
One of the fruits described in this holy vineyard is love. Christ told His disciples that people would know them by their love for each other. Jesus Christ is our common love and bond, and by our love for Him, despite cultural, ethnic, positional, or dispositional differences we are bound together in a miraculous work of grace. This is what made the most profound impression on my heart by living in Dorm 14 in 08-09. It was something that I knew in my head, but I know that the Lord taught me in my heart. I learned that by God’s grace His love could pass even my proud, preferential or secondary beliefs and give me love for my brothers. Our joy in God and all that He had done through Christ and purchased for us on the cross for His glory is to pour over in love for other people. Even as Paul told the Corinthian church, to whom He gave scathing rebukes, that He thanked God upon every remembrance of them! He was even thankful for the grace of God that gave them spiritual gifts that they were now abusing. From this we can also see that one can disagree and offer reproof for doctrinal error or disagreement and yet still love and rejoice with them in the grace of God. It was a remarkable truth made clear to my heart that God’s people can dwell together by grace, and God showed me much about His grace and the fruit that the Gospel produces in our lives.
This is the good news of the Gospel and the promise of the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36) that God would give His people a new heart and the Holy Spirit to enable them to keep His law and to obey Him. This was one of the reasons that Jesus came to die, to purchase for His people the benefits of the New Covenant.
This having been said, the new birth in the believer is followed by a change in action. When God saves us and gives us a new heart, we start the process of sanctification whereby we are sanctified without the goal in sight of being conformed to the image of Christ. As the Holy Spirit works through us, He produces fruit, such as the fruit described in Galatians 5. Some people mistake this passage to be things that we are to work at producing in our life when really they are things that the Holy Spirit produces in us. The only thing we need to do to produce is to make sure we are attached to the True Vine.
One of the fruits described in this holy vineyard is love. Christ told His disciples that people would know them by their love for each other. Jesus Christ is our common love and bond, and by our love for Him, despite cultural, ethnic, positional, or dispositional differences we are bound together in a miraculous work of grace. This is what made the most profound impression on my heart by living in Dorm 14 in 08-09. It was something that I knew in my head, but I know that the Lord taught me in my heart. I learned that by God’s grace His love could pass even my proud, preferential or secondary beliefs and give me love for my brothers. Our joy in God and all that He had done through Christ and purchased for us on the cross for His glory is to pour over in love for other people. Even as Paul told the Corinthian church, to whom He gave scathing rebukes, that He thanked God upon every remembrance of them! He was even thankful for the grace of God that gave them spiritual gifts that they were now abusing. From this we can also see that one can disagree and offer reproof for doctrinal error or disagreement and yet still love and rejoice with them in the grace of God. It was a remarkable truth made clear to my heart that God’s people can dwell together by grace, and God showed me much about His grace and the fruit that the Gospel produces in our lives.
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