SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/3/2017
10:19 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Performance of the New Man”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
3:12-13
Message of the
verses: “12 So, as those who have
been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness and patience; 13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other,
whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also
should you.”
We mentioned when we were looking at verse 3:5a that Paul
instructed believers what they should take off, and now in verse 12 we see that
Paul instructs the believers what they should put on. Now in verses 3:9a-11 Paul tells the
believers what God has done for them, and then in 3:12-17 he describes what God
expects of the believer in response. Now
when God saves a person He changes things from the inside out, and although
there are struggles with living a life the way we have been changed when God
saves us during the sanctification process God will begin to change us from the
inside out. I remember listing to a
sermon shortly after I first became a believer entitled “Becoming What You Are,”
and the sermon was about what we are in Christ once we have been saved and then
living that way.
We have mentioned many times in these Spiritual Diaries
that God is the One who has chosen believers in eternity past and as MacArthur
states “No one becomes a Christian solely by their own choice. Rather, believer
are ‘those who have been chosen of God.’”
Now I have mentioned a sermon that is one of my all time favorite
sermons entitled “Twin Truth” and it is a sermon by John MacArthur who tells us
that the Bible talks about the Sovereignty of God and also the Responsibility
of Man as mentioned in this sermon.
These truths run parallel and do not ever run together, but alongside
like the two tracks of a railroad track. No man can totally understand this, but this
sermon I mention helps us better understand the facts that we don’t understand
how these truths work. Some things you
have to take by faith. I don’t believe
that anyone who is born of woman, with the exception of our Lord Jesus Christ
can make a choice of becoming a believer without the effectual call of the Holy
Spirit. The reason is that we are all
born spiritually dead. It would be like
an undertaker asking a dead person what kind of clothes they wanted him to put
on to bury him in. He would get no
response. Think of Lazarus lying dead in
a tomb for four days and you going up to him and telling him to come out of the
tomb. Likewise, nothing would happen,
however when the Lord Jesus said “Lazarus come forth” Lazarus came walking out
of the tomb alive. This pictures the
effectual call of the Holy Spirit when He calls someone to salvation.
We will pick up looking at the phrase “holy and beloved”
in our next SD.
5/3/2017 10:43 PM
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