Posts filed under 'jesus'
Notes from our time with Chris & Jeri
Matt. 4.2: Jesus fasted 40 days and 40 nights. He went into the desert to be tempted, so he fasted and then Satan came to tempt him. Perhaps Jesus fasted to be more vulnerable to temptation? Or maybe he fasted from food and people to feed the Spirit–to be strengthened by prayer before his tempation. His temptation makes him more credible to us. If he had not been tempted. He would not be able to relate to us. If he couldn’t related to us, what would make him appealing to us?
Ex. 34.28: Moses fasted 40 days and 40 nights when he went on the mountain to receive the 10 commandments. Fasting makes you sensitive to yourself; it brings to light the weakness of your flesh, but it also makes you sensitive to God speaking and working in you. Had Moses not fasted he may not have been able to hear God’s Word to him.
From the Bible dictionary: Fasting can be done as a sign of distress, grief, or repentance; the law only required one day of fasting–the day of atonement. Just going without food and water will not automatically gain the desired results of a fast.
How does Spirit-led living connect to fasting? The idea of feeding the Spirit and starving the flesh is appropriate in regards to fasting. Fasting is not just a time to starve the flesh, for fasting is also a time to feed the spirit. The idea of fasting is to remove something you need (nourishment, sleep, companionship) or something you love or find pleasure in (television, chocolate, video games) for personal time with God. We can fast from our needs to show God that our relationship with him is more important than our physical, human needs.
Why should we fast:
- To repent: OT communities fasted as a sign of repentance when faced with destruction (Ninevah)
- To grieve: OT people fasted after the loss of a leader (Israel and Saul)
- To show distress: OT folks fasted when faced with trouble (Esther and the Jews)
- To hear/meet with God: Moses fasted when he went to the mountain to meet with God
- To begin a journey/do God’s work: Elijah fasted during the journey on which God sent him
- To face a challenging task: Jesus fasted before being tempted
How should we fast:
- Matt. 6.16: “Do not put on a gloomy face so others know you are fasting”–Don’t changed your manner or actions; behave normally when you fast.
- Luke 18.12: Understand the fasting doesn’t make you righteous before God
- Acts 13.8: Pair fasting with prayer. Replace the time you spend eating, watching TV, etc. by spending it with God.
- Ps. 109.24: Expect to feel physically weak.
- Is. 58.3: We should come clean and repent before fasting.
- Is. 58.5: God may be the one who prompts us to fast, especially before judgment and calamity.
July 8th, 2006
I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around these verses, not because they’re necessarily hard, but because (I think) I’ve heard and read them so many times.
Okay, let’s look at verse 8: “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor fulfills the law.”
Let’s put this in context: Paul, in the preceding paragraph, wrote of doing good to remain under the governing authorities. If we stay away from evil, the governing bodies have no reason to avenge us, so how do this? By loving our neighbors (ah, yes, the Golden Rule rises again).
“Love therefore is a fulfillment of the law.” When we love, we don’t do evil and love wins! Right on.
July 7th, 2006
These verses are pretty straightforward. We should obey the governing authorities because God has put these authorities in place over us. When we oppose authority, we oppose and sin against God. If we do good, we have no reason to fear authority. If we do evil, those authorities are in place to avenge us.
Peter wrote about honoring the king who had scattered the Christians throughout the Mediterranean (1 Pet. 2.17). Because of our spiritual freedom, we are not to be rebellious toward the government. We should be law-abiding citizens, so we can claim the protection of the government if charges come against us. In Timothy 2.1-2, Paul charges us to pray for our “kings.” We don’t have to agree with them politically, but we are to pray for them. (See also Titus 3.1)
July 4th, 2006
Primary question: How is the faith God provides to every believer different from the spiritual gift of faith?
Faith: A belief in or confident attitude toward God, involving a commitment to his will for one’s life. Mere intellectual agreement is not merit for salvation (James 2.19–the demons believe in God). Genuine saving faith is a personal attachment to Christ: commitment to him and reliance on him.
1 Tim. 1.12: Because we know who we’ve put our faith in, we are able to remain faithful and obedient.
Eph. 2.8-9: We are saved by faith, not by works.
Gal. 2:16: We are not justified through the law but through faith in Christ.
Jude 3: We should fight for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
Pistis (Greek: faith)
Rom. 12.3-8 talks more about “the proportion of faith.” Do we all get different amounts according to our spiritual gifts? Do those of us with the spiritual gift of faith just get a higher dosage? It seems that there should be a difference in these faiths. Maybe it’s just easier for us to know where God wants us and to hear his leading and to act on his leading.
How much are spiritual gifts aligned with someone’s personality? Do those with faith have an easier time discerning what is trustworthy and what isn’t? Do they have an easier time trusting people? Are they more cynical? Does having faith just make placing faith in God easier? What is the role of this gift within the church? What does it look like?
My pastor’s thoughts on spiritual gifts from Sunday:
Spiritual gift inventories can be dangerous because they can prevent us from meeting the needs in the church that fall outside of our gifts. They prevent us from stepping outside of our comfort zones. Spiritual gifts are not to esteem ourselves, but we often use them to do so. Instead, we are to use them to esteem God. Spiritual gifts can change as we grow spiritually.
Ideally, we need counsel from other godly people to help see our spiritual gifts. No matter what, we must offer ourselves to God and trust him with our lives, our gifts, and our talents.
July 3rd, 2006
“For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself that he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith” (NAS).
Other versions and translations provided some insight for me, but a lot of my answers came from my pastor’s message this Sunday. First, here are my thoughts:
What is the “measure of faith” that God gives to us? Do we each get an equal amount? What about people who have the gift of faith? Are we only allotted a certain amount for our lifetime? How does one measure the amount of faith one has? Apparently, we are to measure our self-worth according to how much faith we have.
How does thinking of myself soberly have anything to do with the amount of faith I have (that God’s given me)? Perhaps the more faith I have, the more I see myself in light of the Father: an unworthy child of God. What else does God say about self-esteem and self-worth? As his follower, washed in Christ’s blood, who am I in his eyes?
My pastor spent some time preaching from Romans 12 on Sunday, and here are his thoughts on this verse: We need to have a sober view of self. We should think of ourselves with “God-esteem” rather than self-esteem. We need to set ourselves on God, not on self. We cannot covet the spiritual life God has given to others.
A measure of faith: Faith leads us to trust God in the measure of faith he’s given; it’s not our deciding what to do for God–it’s God deciding what we should do for him.
July 3rd, 2006
“Present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God.”
What is an acceptable sacrifice?
Living: If a sacrifice is dead, if it means nothing to the one who is presenting it, what value will it have for God? In the OT, people brought their best cattle, their best sheep, their best crops to the temple for sacrificing. They gave God their best. What is the best–the most important–thing in my life that I can sacrifice to God?
Holy: If something is holy, it is set apart from the other things like it. It’s not just a plate; it’s a holy plate–set apart from the others. To present myself as a holy sacrifice, I must be set apart from the world, “be set apart as the Lord is set apart.” God is set apart from other gods, and we should be set apart from other people. We should be set apart from others in our actions, in our life patterns, in our thoughts, in our beliefs. Beyond simply being set apart, there must be a difference between me and an unbeliever.
June 29th, 2006
Notes from hanging with Chris & Jeri
Spirit: a general reference in the NT to the spirit of human beings (Matt. 5.3; Rom. 8.16; Heb. 4.12)
Soul: that which makes humans alive; the soul departs at death; OR the inner life of a person; the seat of emotions; the center of one’s personality
So what’s the difference between the two? Perhaps the differences are so subtle that truly only God’s Word can separate them (Heb. 4.12). I certainly can’t figure out how the spirit and soul are different from the definitions given.
Flesh: biblical writers express the flesh as weak; it’s the earthly part of a person; if we are living in the flesh, we cannot please God
Deeds of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-23)
- immorality
- impurity
- sensuality
- idolatry
- sorcery
- enmities
- strife
- jealousy
- outbursts of anger (see my running entry from earlier tonight)
- disputes
- dissensions
- factions
- envying
- drunkeness
- carousing
Fruits of the Spirit
- love
- joy
- peace
- patience
- kindness
- goodness
- faithfulness
- gentleness
- self-control
Galations 5.13 says we are called to freedom. Verse 16 says, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” Verse 17 says the flesh is set against the Spirit and vice versa. Verse 24 says when we belong to Christ, our passions and desires are crucified with him.
Feed the Spirit; starve the flesh: Is it “feed the Holy Spirit?” Maybe it’s “feed the Holy Spirit, which is in you.” We can do this using our spiritual disciplines. Spirit could also represent our relationship with God or be the essence of your Christian self.
Humanity also fights the flesh; that’s why we have laws against the deeds of the flesh and have no laws against the fruits of the Spirit. Not feeding the flesh does not automatically equal feeding the spirit. You have to consciously feed the spirit manually, if you would. One way we can do this is by doing great instead of merely doing good. A.W. Tozer said that good is the greates enemy of great. Doing good, being good, etc. prevent us from being great and doing great.
Of course, being and doing great for God isn’t easy. It takes discipline, which isn’t easy either. (But consider that Jesus named his posse after this word. They didn’t have an easy time either.) For me, discipline is often making myself do something I don’t want to do, but the end goal of that discipline is to eventually want to do what I should do.
Oh the puzzlement!
June 14th, 2006
This week, in an effort to pay more and better attention to our walks with God, Chris and I have started studying the Bible together. Now when I say, “study the Bible,” I don’t mean that we’ve whipped out all of our commentaries to see what the experts think. I mean we’re opening the Bible, reading Scripture, and asking hard questions and trying to come up with logical answers. We’re doing a reading plan that takes us through an overview (60 days) of Paul’s writing, and it helps that we’ve started with Paul.
Okay, here’s what we discussed last night: Romans 3:21-31 (NASV)
We were stuck right away on verse 21, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested.” God brought righteousness to us through Jesus Christ because we could never truly attain righteousness through the Law. But does that mean that the Law is obsolete today? What exactly is the function of the Law (of the Old Testament) today? From what we understand, the old purpose was to bring people under one standard, a standard no one could meet, but now there is a new way to be righteous, which is according to the promises of the Old Testament.
The idea of the OT law was for God to show his people how completely jacked up they were. If Christ had come before Moses and the Law, no one would have understood the cost of Christ’s blood, but because the Hebrews spent centuries trying to atone their own sins with the blood of animals, they (theoretically) understood what Christ’s blood was worth.
Verse 27 says, “Where then is boasting?” Paul has spent his time telling us that we are justified by Christ, and he throws out this question. Immediately, I think of the 1 Corinthians 1:31, which says, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Great. This verse is actually a quote from Jeremiah 9:23-24, “‘Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,’ declares the Lord.”
Now this verse cross-references another half-dozen verses across the OT, but I stopped here because earlier in the evening, my friend, whose name is also Chris, challenged me by asking, “When I find relationship with God, will that relationship be the sweetest gift of my life?” Or in other words, what do I boast in?
Good questions. See he was speaking about how the gifts of God–our family, friends, spouses, talents, etc.–are what truly get in the way of relationship with him, not our sin. Yes, sin poses a threat, but the good things in life get in the way of God sometimes.
Chris spoke about fasting and hungering. Fasting isn’t necessarily about food, though it certainly can be. Mostly, it’s about removing whatever stands in the way of God in my life. So I asked myself, “What consumes my life? If it isn’t God, then, Houston, we have a problem.”
Here is a short list of stuff that consumes my life:
- Sleeping–including lengthy afternoon naps
- Television
- Christopher
- Ravi (the cat)
- Running
- Reading fun stuff (ahem, not always the Bible)
- Listening to music (ahem, not always the “Christian” stuff)
- Icecream
But Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 6:1, “I will not be mastered by anything.” Okay, then what do I do with the list I just wrote down?
Today’s advertising teaches us to hunger, to want something. You see an ad for Pizza Hut pizza at 4:30 in the afternoon, and suddenly you start thinking that maybe pizza is a good idea for dinner. Life is sort of one big commercial that makes us hunger for stuff: true love, great bodies, cool cars, etc.
But what makes us hunger for God? On one hand, God’s put something in each of us that makes us hunger for him, but on the other hand it’s our human nature to hunger for ourselves, to look out for ourselves, which makes us cannibals, in a sense, because what do we really know about what we need?
Our actions reflect who or what we truly love. If we say we want God, our actions must reflect that otherwise we are liars. But how do we change? How do we go from hungering after our own lives to hungering after God and the life he wants so desperately to give us? We start making small preferential choices that favor God. We choose godly conversations instead of television. We choose prayer time instead of nap time. We choose reading Scripture instead of reading smut.
So where am I in all of this? Well, I’m trying to figure it out myself. The list above still taunts me (or rather, convicts me), and while some of the items are good for me (my husband, running) some are not (television, icecream). So this morning’s blog is an effort to not watch as much TV. Instead of watching TV, I’ve chosen to think about God, and I didn’t have any icecream for breakfast.
June 8th, 2006
