SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/23/2019
10:01 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Intro into The Believer’s Warfare”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
6:10-13
Message of the verses: “10 Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in
the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able
to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not
against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against
the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of
wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore, take up the full armor
of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done
everything, to stand firm.”
Notice
the first word in the text, “finally,” and this means that Paul is about to end
his letter to the Ephesians, a letter that we have been considering for almost
a year as we began on the 13th of October, 2018. I have to say that I finally realized that
the book of Ephesians was the book that the Lord wanted me to study, especially
since the beginning of this year that humility was the one thing that the Lord
wanted to teach me about and the answer to the teaching of humility came once
we got to the fifth chapter of Ephesians teaching that in order to be humble
one has to continually be filled with the Holy Spirit. I also have to say that I have had many
struggles as I studied this book, as the enemy of our souls desires believers
to fall and not do the things that the Lord has in mind for us to do. The struggles have been intense at times and
now as we get to the believers warfare my prayer is that the Lord will use the
remaining section of Ephesians to help me get the victory that is needed to win
over the struggles that I have been going through.
I
have mentioned that in my almost 27 years of life before the Lord graciously
saved me that in most of those years I developed the very bad habit of swearing
even though in my unconverted life I knew that this was wrong. I also mentioned that the day that the Lord
saved me in 1974 that He took swearing out of my vocabulary and replaced it
with a desire to study His Word, a desire that I continue to have. I liken the taking away of my bad choice of
words to the victory that Joshua gave to Israel as they entered the Promise
Land. Joshua told the Israelites that
after these battles were complete that the different tribes had to take care of
the battles in their land to complete the victory. I, like those different tribes am still
fighting the battles even though my salvation is complete. I think a lot about Caleb who was 80 years
old when he entered the Promised Land, as he and Joshua were the only ones from
the first generation of Israelites who came out of Egypt as the others all died
who were 20 years and older. Caleb took
care of the land that was given to him by the Lord and fought off the remaining
Canaanites who were in his land, and this is a picture of everyone’s struggles
after they become believers as they are saved, but there are still battles to engage
in, this is what I know that I am going through at this time as there are still
some Canaanites to deal with, and so with great joy I begin this section of
Ephesians to gain help from the Lord to defeat those Canaanites just like Caleb
defeated them so many years ago.
We
will end our SD for today by quoting the very first two paragraphs from John
MacArthur’s commentary on this 26th chapter of his commentary: “The true Christian described in Ephesians
1-3 who lives the faithful life described in 4:1-6:9 can be sure that he will
be involved in the spiritual warfare described in 6:10-20. The faithful Christian life is a battle; it
is warfare on a grand scale—because when God begins to bless, Satan begins to
attack.
“If
we are walking worthy of our calling, in humility rather than pride, in unity rather than
divisiveness, in the new self rather than the old, in love rather than lust, in
light rather than darkness, in wisdom rather than foolishness, in the fullness
of the Spirit rather than the drunkenness of wine, and in mutual submission
rather than self-serving independence, then we can be absolutely certain we
will have opposition and conflict.”
In
our next SD, Lord willing, we will look at how the ministry of Jesus began, and
if you have followed these SD’s over the years, especially from the book of
Mark you may remember how His ministry began.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Live my life being filled with the Spirit so
that I can win the struggles that go along with walking with the Lord,
including humility rather than pride, and all the other things written above.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust that the Lord, through His Spirit
will help me as I study this last section of Ephesians, and especially help me
to live a humble life.
Today’s quotation from “Love in Action:”
Far as the body is one and has many
members, but all the
members of that one body, being many,
are one
body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit
we were all baptized into one body.
1 Corinthians
12:12, 13a
9/23/2019 10:43 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment