SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/28/2019
9:43 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Christ Centered”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 4:20
Message of the
verses: “But you did not learn
Christ in this way.”
I want to quote the last thing that we were studying in
our last SD to help keep us on track: “Both
the context and the use of the aorist tense of the verb ‘to learn’ in these
passages lead to the conclusion that this learning refers to the moment of
saving faith.”
I want to look at James 4:4 which says: “Friendship with
the world is hostility toward God.” I
remember when I first became a believer as I was running around with a crowd of
people that even as a young believer I knew that I had to sever my relationship
with them. I have to say that it took
some time to do so as for one thing I was working with some of them and could
not just stop talking to them. I assure
you that I did witness to them about their need for salvation, but none of them
wanted to listen to me. It was a
difficult choice to make and it took me a while to do so, but one of the things
that helped me was to make new friends with believers which the Lord led me to
soon after I became a believer. Now if a
person who states that they have become a believer continues to have friendships
with the world, and makes no effort to stop then one has to question whether or
not they truly are believers. Let’s look
at 1 John 2:4 and then 15: “4 The one who says, "I have come to know Him,"
and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;” “15
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world,
the love of the Father is not in him.”
As we can see from these verses the ways of the world and they ways of believers
are not compatible.
Paul says that we did not learn
Christ this way, and the way that we learn to be a Christian is to first
repent, to agree with God that you are a sinner, and there is nothing in that
you can do on your own to take care of your sin problem, the very nature that
you are born with is sinful and therefore after learning this truth you need to
repent of being a sinner. John MacArthur
writes “The very purpose of receiving Christ is to ‘be saved from this perverse
generation’ (Acts 2:20), and no one is saved who does not repent and forsake
sin. Repentance does not save us, but
God cannot save us from sin of which we are unwilling to let go. To hold on to sin is to refuse God, to scorn
His grace, and to nullify faith. No Christian
is totally from the presence of sin in this life, but in Christ he is willingly
freed from his orientation to sin. He
slips and falls many times, but the determined direction of his life is away
from sin.”
Lord willing we will finish this
section in our next SD.
Quotation for
today comes from John Wesley: “O LORD,
let us not live to be useless, for Christ’s sake.”
4/28/2019 10:05
PM
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