Knowing God's Redemptive Will For Us

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth -- in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory."

In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory."

NKJV Ephesians 1:3-14

"We have a love-hate relationship with God's will. We dearly want to discover it and obey it, to be secure in knowing we are following the path HE desires. On the other hand, we definitely don't want to find out what HE wants, because deep down we suspect it may not be to our liking."

InterVarsity Press, Quiet Time Bible Study

God's Strength

"In a chapter entitled "The False Hope of Modern Christianity," Larry Crabb writes, "Modern Christianity, in dramatic reversal of its biblical form, promises to relieve the pain of living in a fallen world. The message, whether it's from fundamentalists requiring us to live by a favored set of rules or from charismatics urging a deeper surrender of the Spirit's power, is too often the same: The promise of bliss is for NOW! Complete satisfaction can be ours this side of Heaven" (Inside Out [Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1988], p. 15). The life of David exposes the inadequacy of that view. In this chapter David and his men experience a devastating crisis. Yet in the midst of the crisis, they also find strength and help in the Lord."

InterVarsity Press, Quiet Time Bible Study

Searching ...

"Search the scriptures;"

KJV John 5:39

"The Greek word here rendered search signifies a strict, close, diligent, curious search, such as men make when they are seeking gold, or hunters when they are in earnest after game. We must not rest content with having given a superficial reading to a chapter or two, but with the candle of the Spirit we must deliberately seek out the hidden meaning of the word. Holy Scripture requires searching—much of it can only be learned by careful study ... No man who merely skims the book of God can profit thereby; we must dig and mine until we obtain the hid treasure. The door of the word only opens to the key of diligence. The Scriptures claim searching. They are the writings of God, bearing the divine stamp and imprimatur—who shall dare to treat them with levity? He who despises them despises the God who wrote them ... Under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to the searching eye it glows with splendour of revelation ... Lastly, the Scriptures reveal Jesus: "They are they which testify of Me." No more powerful motive can be urged upon Bible readers than this: he who finds Jesus finds life, heaven, all things. Happy he who, searching his Bible, discovers his Saviour."

C. H. Spurgeon

Jephthah's Story

"If our families were perfect, none of us would ever feel worthless or unloved, our relationships with each other would bring joy and satisfaction, and we would experience intimacy with God. Unfortunately, we are all products of a fallen world. Pains from our past continue to bring a destructive element into our present relationships. The intimacy and acceptance we crave slip away from us. Does God love us even when our own dysfunctions cause us to run from him? In the story of Jephthah, God uses this man with a broken and hurting past to illustrate what he will do to heal a broken, pain-driven world."

InterVarsity Press, Quiet Time Bible Study

Let's prepare our hearts for God's healing through the reading of

Judges 11:1 - 12:7

Being Vile

"Behold, I am vile;"

KJV Job 40:4

"One cheering word, poor lost sinner, for thee! You think you must not come to God because YOU are vile. Now, there is not a saint living on earth but has been made to feel that he is vile. If Job, and Isaiah, and Paul were all obliged to say "I am vile," oh, poor sinner, wilt thou be ashamed to join in the same confession? If divine grace does not eradicate all sin from the believer, how dost thou hope to do it thyself? and if God loves His people while they are yet vile, dost thou think thy vileness will prevent His loving thee? Believe on Jesus, thou outcast of the world's society! Jesus calls thee, and such as thou art."

C. H. Spurgeon

I have had the privilege of being taught about two disciple's response to betraying Christ. While Judas felt the full impact of betraying Jesus, and seeing the vileness of his sin, committed suicide. Peter, who was no less sinful in his belligerently denial of being a disciple, wept bitterly knowing that his vileness can only be forgiven by Christ. Eventually, he became the rock by which Christ built the early church upon.

What then should our response be in relation with the vile sin that we constantly wrestle with ? Can murder, adultery, fornication or pornography negate the complete redemptive work of Christ ?

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit."

NIV Romans 8:1-4

Distinctly Different

"O my God, and let me see Thy hand so distinctly in it that I may most clearly perceive the difference which Thy grace has made between me and the ungodly!"

C. H. Spurgeon

To see God's hand distinctly in our lives, thoughts, speech, motives, etc so that it can become obvious that there are differences between the "saved by Grace" and the unsaved.

How have my life, thoughts, speech, motives, etc been different from those of the carnal man ? Juxtaposing intentionally, does a difference lie therein ?

Where can the difference be seen, noticed or felt ?

What else must I do in order to let God's hand be distinctly seen in me ?

Thinking and Being

"I think, therefore I am" (Latin: "cogito ergo sum") (French: "je pense, donc je suis")

René Descartes

Conversely,

"I don't think therefore, I am not"

Have we attuned ourselves to being too much of a sensate through over-emphasis in kinesthetics and in visuals that we have forgotten to use our mental faculties for cognitive engagement ?

Why have we become so adversed to thinking ?

An interesting proposition of such a phenomenon by Senior Pastor Covenant EFC,

"... as such. postmodernism is a sad commentary of man's desperate search for meaning; a vain championing of an ideological abstraction which promotes an ideological arbitrariness - a reasoning without reason in the face of human arrogance and absurdity, which ultimately ushers one towards fideism at best and nihilism at worst."

Wherein my take is that the search for meaning has been overtaken by the complacency of nihilism, and for the diminishing breed of enthuse like me, fall flat into fideism, not having the benefits of rigourous cognition to be able to marry reason with faith.