SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/1/2018
10:40 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “Petitions for Believers”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
1:17
Message of the verses: “17 that the God of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom
and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.”
I
have to say that from the commentary that I am looking at to help me to
understand this very difficult letter that this section we are in is very
long. I stated that we would look at the
beginning of this SD how this subject effects believers today. Do believers today do as many in the past and
not understand what they have in Christ, and do believers today try to add
things that are not what the Bible has to say that they have. We begin with another quote from John MacArthur
to try and help us understand this important subject.
“Yet
today many Christians spend a great deal of time and effort vainly looking for
blessings already available to them.
They pray for strength, although His Word tells them they can do all
things through Christ who strengthens them (Phil. 4:13). The pray for more love, although Paul says
that God’s own love is already poured out within their hearts through the Holy
Spirit (Rom. 5:5). They pray for more
grace, although the Lord says the grace He has already given is sufficient (2
Cor. 12:9). They pray for peace, although
the Lord has given them His own peace, ‘which surpasses all comprehension’
(Phil. 4:7). It is expected that we pray
for such blessings if the tone of the prayer is one of seeking the grace to
appropriate what is already given, rather than one of pleading for something we
think is scarcely available or is reluctantly shared by God.
“The
Christian’s primary need is for wisdom and obedience to appropriate the
abundance of blessings the Lord has already given. Our problem is not lack of blessings, but
lack of insight and wisdomto understand and use them properly and
faithfully. Our blessings are so vast
that the human mind cannot comprehend them.
In our own minds we cannot fathom the riches we have in our position in
Jesus Christ. Such things are totally
beyond the human mind to grasp. Only the
Holy Spirit Himself can search the deep things of the mind of God, and only the
Spirit can bring them to our understanding.
‘Just as it is written,’ Paul says, ‘Things which eye has not seen and
ear has not heard, and which has not entered the heart of man, all that God has
prepared for those who love Him.’ For to
us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things,
even the depts of God. For who among men
knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even
so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the
world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely
given to us by God’ (1 Cor. 2:9-12).
“God’s
deeper truths cannot be seen with our eyes, heard with our ears, or
comprehended by our reason or intuition.
They are revealed only to those who love Him.”
I
can say that I have learned much from this rather long quote, and I hope that
the readers of this SD have too.
As
believers in Christ we all have many specific needs which include physical,
moral, and spiritual needs, and for these we must ask the Lord’s help. However no Christian needs, or can have, more
of the Lord or of His blessing and inheritance that believers already
have. What God gives to us is perfect
for He is perfect. Paul tells us like he
told the Ephesian believers not to seek spiritual resources, but understand and
use those we given when we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and
Lord.
Look
again at the last part of verse 17 which says, “may give to you a spirit of
wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.” We see here that the spirit of wisdom is
given through the Holy Spirit Himself, “as some interpreters suggest. Pneuma
(spirit) is anarthrous here, meaning that it has no article before it. In such cases the indefinite article is
usually supplied in English, as in our text:
‘a spirit.’ Believers already
posses the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9), for whom their bodies are temples (1 Cor.
6:19). Nor does it seem that Paul was
speaking of the human spirit, which every person already possess (1 Cor. 2:11).” MacArthur continues: “The basic meaning of pneuma (from which we get such English
words as pneumatic and pneumonia) is breath or air, and from that meaning is
derived the connotation of spirit. But
like our English spirit, pneuma
sometimes was used of a disposition, influence, or attitude—as in ‘He is in
high spirits today.’ Jesus used the word
in that sense in the first beatitude: ‘Blessed
are the poor in spirit’ (Matt. 5:13). He
was not referring to the Holy Spirit or to the human spirit but to the spirit,
or attitude, of humility.
We
only have a little bit left in order to finish this section and since tomorrow
is Sunday and Sunday has its own things that must be done I will as usual only
have time to do a shorter SD and so we will continue to look at this section in
that SD, Lord willing.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I think my prayer life may be a bit
difference after understanding that some of the inheritance that I have in
Christ are things that I need the wisdom from the Holy Spirit to understand.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Spirit of God to give me wisdom and
understanding when I don’t understand the inheritance that I have in Christ.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Zebedee” (Luke 5:10).
Today’s Bible question: “Which book closes with the account of Paul’s
first imprisonment at Rome?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/1/2018 11:37 AM
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