Bible Study Blog for Tuesday, August 30, 2011
August 30th, 2011 in Pastor's Blog
Job 22-24; Acts 11
“When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.”
Just like that – the Jewish believers LET GO of something they held ferociously all their lives. The cultural and spiritual wall between Jews and Gentiles came tumbling down – because Jewish believers were submitted to the Word of God.
God continues to speak fresh truth into OUR ferocious beliefs and biases. And when that confrontation happens to us – our spiritual progress will depend on our ability to submit our pride, scruples, and conventional wisdom to the Word of God. Thoughts?
Have an Excellent Monday!
Tags: Acts, Bayside Church Woodland, Bayside Woodland, Bible Study, Job
The Amplified NT at Phil 4:7 explains that the peace of God is “that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot, of whatever sort that is. As restated by Patrick Starfish: “Everything will be okay in the end..if its not okay, then its not the end.”
Getting to that confidence that God has my everything under control ends the temptation to sin through frustration at things, processes and/or people. It’s not the product of God’s leading when we discover ourselves flaring up in anger or falling into despair. The Devil gets us started down those paths, and our flesh takes us through the next steps that lead us to failure and sin. All too often I’ve not been alert to those steps and have failed to be the man that God intended for me to be when He called me to salvation. Most of my life I’ve, for a long time, excused my reactions because God gave me the intensity in my personality. Wrong!
The main thing I need to keep in mind is that I’m not a slave to those steps to sin and that God has made a path of escape for me so long as I maintain an awareness of whose I am. I pray that God gives you the sense of Him in your life every day that permits you to avoid being led into the wrong path that leads to failure and the inevitable remorse that flows from failing to have the character of Christ evident all the time.
Conventional wisdom would have me looking inside myself for the answer instead of to God through Christ.