How to be the daughter… be the son God created you to be.
You were once a rock, now you’re a raft. Our nature has changed. Not only do we live, we can help save others.
1 John 4
16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.
God is love. God is in us. Love never fails. Therefore we never fail because we are one with Christ.
1. Are you more known for your gifts, talents, and abilities or more known for your love? Explain.
2. When you share your gifts, talents, and abilities are you motivated by love or are you motivated by how it makes you look, feel, or what it can gain you?
The love talked about here is Agape love - it is defined as unconditional love. A love that expects nothing in return. A love that is not dependent on someone else loving you. This is how God loves us. This was a radical thought to the Corinthians since this type of love wasn’t available until Jesus came into their lives.
As people, we tend to be in competition with each other. We focus on what we can achieve. What we can gain.
1 Corinthians 13
13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
God is changing how the Corinthians see their worth. Their worth is no longer in what they achieve or what they can do. Their worth is now in how they love. And not only how they love, but that they are now one with love. One with Jesus. That is what their worth is now.
Being smart, popular, beautiful and rich without being loving makes you a villain. Watch TV and movies... what do the villains have in common? They don’t have love. They have talent, they have intelligence, they have money… but they don’t have love.
1. Who do you have the hardest time loving? Why do you think that is?
2. What do you think are some practical ways to start infusing love into your relationships?
No greater love has man than this, that He lay down His life for His friends. John 15:!3
It is hard to lay down our lives for those who we’re very familiar with.
Remember God loves us with Agape love. We are His children. His sons and daughters. And because He loves us like that we are able to love others like that. As a believer, your DNA has changed. Your nature has changed in such a way that you are someone who is created to love. Love itself is now your nature. And love never fails.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Monday, July 7, 2014
Conviction vs. Condemnation
When you sin or make a mistake, how do you feel? Do you have a sin that you keep doing over and over again? How do you think God feels about you when you sin?
Condemnation - Blame... to hold responsible, to find fault with.
Conviction - the act of convincing a person of error or sinfulness
Condemn:
Condemnation is the pronouncement of you as a person being guilty and unfit. That you by nature are evil and wrong. This is what the enemy tries to get us to believe. That God despises us and has declared us unfit for use.
Romans 8:1-4
8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Christ was condemned for us.
John 3:17-18
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
We, who believe, are not condemned.
1Cor. 1:8
8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He keeps us blameless.
Utmost for His Highest
The bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man's sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away--an infinitely more profound revelation. The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, "I am my own god." This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis--my claim to my right to myself.
Genesis 3:4-5
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Philippians 2:
6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped…
This is the root of the problem of our existence.
When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man(John 2:25). Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch----only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. "This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than light..." (1John 3:19).
Hebrews 9:24-28
24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
One time sacrifice. We will never be blamed again.
Colossians 3:3
3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
We died in Christ and are hidden with Him.
How do you relate to God when you sin? How does God deal with you when you sin? If you died right now, do you believe you would meet God with all of your sins forgiven?
I used to be scared that if I died during the day, before I had my daily confession with God at night, that maybe I would be separated. I had a real fear that sinning would separate me from God and hadn’t yet grasped that although I could choose to sin, sin couldn’t separate me from God anymore. He had paid the price for my sins… once and for all.
Father/Son dynamic - We cannot be separated from Christ by sin once Christ comes into our life. We still repent and confess our sins to repair our relationship with our Father, not out of fear of being separated from Him.
Conviction: the act of convincing a person of error.
the act of moving a person by argument or evidence to belief, agreement, consent, or a course of action
Convict - convince of error or sinfulness
- declare (someone) to be guilty of a criminal offense by the verdict of a jury or the decision of a judge in a court of law.
Conviction declares that an act that we have committed is wrong, evil or in error. Not that we ourselves are wrong, evil or in error. It is a declaration over our actions not over ourselves.
Condemnation speaks to our nature.
Conviction speaks to our behavior.
We often think that the God of the Old Testament is quite harsh and vindictive but look at this passage.
Nehemiah 9:29-31
29 “You warned them in order to turn them back to your law, but they became arrogant and disobeyed your commands. They sinned against your ordinances, of which you said, ‘The person who obeys them will live by them.’ Stubbornly they turned their backs on you, became stiff-necked and refused to listen. 30 For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you warned them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so you gave them into the hands of the neighboring peoples. 31 But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.
Colossians 1:28 He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.
Admonish -- to express warning or disapproval in a gentle and earnest manner. To give encouragement to.
Hebrews 12:4-13
4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
God's discipline or conviction produces a harvest of righteousness and peace. We are God's children.
Utmost for His Highest
It is very easy to grieve the Spirit of God; we do it by despising the discipline of the Lord, or by becoming discouraged when He rebukes us. If our experience of being set apart from sin and being made holy through the process of sanctification is still very shallow, we tend to mistake the reality of God for something else. And when the Spirit of God gives us a sense of warning or restraint, we are apt to say mistakenly, "Oh, that must be from the devil.""Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19), and do not despise Him when He says to you, in effect, "Don't be blind on this point anymore--you are not as far along spiritually as you thought you were. Until now I have not been able to reveal this to you, but I'm revealing it to you right now." When the Lord disciplines you like that, let Him have His way with you. Allow Him to put you into a right-standing relationship before God."... nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him." We begin to pout, become irritated with God, and then say, "Oh well, I can't help it. I prayed and things didn't turn out right anyway. So I'm simply going to give up on everything." Just think what would happen if we acted like this in any other area of our lives!Am I fully prepared to allow God to grip me by His power and do a work in me that is truly worthy of Himself? Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me -- sanctification is God's idea of what He wants to do for me. But He has to get me into the state of mind and spirit where I will allow Him to sanctify me completely, whatever the cost.
Accountability - Confession
1John 1:9
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
James 5:16
16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
In summary... You are convicted to be the person God says you are as opposed to being condemned for the person you were.
Condemnation - Blame... to hold responsible, to find fault with.
Conviction - the act of convincing a person of error or sinfulness
Condemn:
| 1. | to express strong disapproval of |
| 2. | to declare to be reprehensible, wrong, or evil usually after weighing evidence and without reservation |
| 3. | to demonstrate the guilt of |
| 4. | to judge or pronounce unfit for use. |
Romans 8:1-4
8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Christ was condemned for us.
John 3:17-18
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
We, who believe, are not condemned.
1Cor. 1:8
8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He keeps us blameless.
Utmost for His Highest
The bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man's sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away--an infinitely more profound revelation. The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, "I am my own god." This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis--my claim to my right to myself.
Genesis 3:4-5
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Philippians 2:
6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped…
This is the root of the problem of our existence.
When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man(John 2:25). Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch----only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. "This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than light..." (1John 3:19).
Hebrews 9:24-28
24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
One time sacrifice. We will never be blamed again.
Colossians 3:3
3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
We died in Christ and are hidden with Him.
How do you relate to God when you sin? How does God deal with you when you sin? If you died right now, do you believe you would meet God with all of your sins forgiven?
I used to be scared that if I died during the day, before I had my daily confession with God at night, that maybe I would be separated. I had a real fear that sinning would separate me from God and hadn’t yet grasped that although I could choose to sin, sin couldn’t separate me from God anymore. He had paid the price for my sins… once and for all.
Father/Son dynamic - We cannot be separated from Christ by sin once Christ comes into our life. We still repent and confess our sins to repair our relationship with our Father, not out of fear of being separated from Him.
Conviction: the act of convincing a person of error.
the act of moving a person by argument or evidence to belief, agreement, consent, or a course of action
Convict - convince of error or sinfulness
- declare (someone) to be guilty of a criminal offense by the verdict of a jury or the decision of a judge in a court of law.
Conviction declares that an act that we have committed is wrong, evil or in error. Not that we ourselves are wrong, evil or in error. It is a declaration over our actions not over ourselves.
Condemnation speaks to our nature.
Conviction speaks to our behavior.
We often think that the God of the Old Testament is quite harsh and vindictive but look at this passage.
Nehemiah 9:29-31
29 “You warned them in order to turn them back to your law, but they became arrogant and disobeyed your commands. They sinned against your ordinances, of which you said, ‘The person who obeys them will live by them.’ Stubbornly they turned their backs on you, became stiff-necked and refused to listen. 30 For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you warned them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so you gave them into the hands of the neighboring peoples. 31 But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.
Colossians 1:28 He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.
Admonish -- to express warning or disapproval in a gentle and earnest manner. To give encouragement to.
Hebrews 12:4-13
4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
God's discipline or conviction produces a harvest of righteousness and peace. We are God's children.
Utmost for His Highest
It is very easy to grieve the Spirit of God; we do it by despising the discipline of the Lord, or by becoming discouraged when He rebukes us. If our experience of being set apart from sin and being made holy through the process of sanctification is still very shallow, we tend to mistake the reality of God for something else. And when the Spirit of God gives us a sense of warning or restraint, we are apt to say mistakenly, "Oh, that must be from the devil.""Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19), and do not despise Him when He says to you, in effect, "Don't be blind on this point anymore--you are not as far along spiritually as you thought you were. Until now I have not been able to reveal this to you, but I'm revealing it to you right now." When the Lord disciplines you like that, let Him have His way with you. Allow Him to put you into a right-standing relationship before God."... nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him." We begin to pout, become irritated with God, and then say, "Oh well, I can't help it. I prayed and things didn't turn out right anyway. So I'm simply going to give up on everything." Just think what would happen if we acted like this in any other area of our lives!Am I fully prepared to allow God to grip me by His power and do a work in me that is truly worthy of Himself? Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me -- sanctification is God's idea of what He wants to do for me. But He has to get me into the state of mind and spirit where I will allow Him to sanctify me completely, whatever the cost.
Accountability - Confession
1John 1:9
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
James 5:16
16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
In summary... You are convicted to be the person God says you are as opposed to being condemned for the person you were.
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