SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/4/2023 10:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “The
Person who Initiates Discipline”
Bible Reading & Meditation
Reference: Matthew 18:15b
Message of the verse: “go and reprove him in private;”
In my personal
prayer list that I try to use five days a week I have a section at the
beginning of it that I use to praise the Lord for His attributes. I suppose that I have shared them on my
Spiritual Diaries before but I think that it fits in nicely with what we are
going to begin talking about in this SD.
“Praise
the Lord for His attributes, for who God is: God is HOLY, and
all of His attributes are holy. God is
good, glorious, pure, sovereign, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, truth,
measureless, omnipresence, omnipotent, omniscience, all wise, immutable,
eternal, God is wrath, God pardons, God is Jealous, faithful, God is love and just.” Now as we look at all of these attributes
listed here we have to understand that God is all of them all of the time. I have highlighted “God is love and just” to
show that we cannot just look at God as love without seeing Him as just too,
and this is the problem that many believers are focusing on in our churches
today, that is that God is love and don’t have anything to say about the other
attributes that He has, especially being just.
John MacArthur writes:
“Belief in a God who is all love and no wrath, all grace and no justice,
all forgiveness and no condemnation is idolatry (worship of a false god
invented by men), and it inevitably leads to universalism—which, of course, is
what many liberal churches have been preaching for generations. Salvation becomes meaningless, because sin that
God overlooks does not need to be forgiven.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross becomes a travesty, because He gave His
live for a redemptive purpose. Not only
that, but it becomes apologetically impossible to explain the common question
about why a loving God allows pain, suffering, disease, and tragedy. Removing God’s holy hatred of sin emasculates
the gospel and hinders rather than helps evangelism.
“Profoundly aware of the danger of mistaking emotional
stimulation for spiritual awakening, in his Treatise
on Religious Affections Jonathan Edwards observed:
‘Fallen
human nature is fertile ground for a fleshly religiosity which is impiously ‘spiritual’
but ultimately rooted in self-love. High
emotional experiences, effusive religious talk, and even praising God and
experiencing love for God and man can be self-centered and self-motivated. In contrast of this, experiences of renewal
which are genuinely from the Holy Spirit are God-centered in character and
based on worship, and appreciation of God’s worth and grandeur divorced from
self-interest. Such genuine experiences
create humility in the convert rather than pride and issue in a new creation
and a new spirit of meekness, gentleness, forgiveness, and mercy. They leave the believer hungering and thirsting
for righteousness instead of satiated with self-congratulation.’”
I think that it best for me to quote two more paragraphs
from MacArthur’s commentary as I end this SD, and I hope that I will be able to
finish it tomorrow.
“True evangelism and revival have nothing to do with
building self-esteem, self-acceptance, and feeling good about oneself. They have nothing to do with gaining healt,
wealth, and fleshly happiness. They have
much to do with acknowledging one’s sinfulness, unworthiness, weakness, and helplessness
as much to do with humble gratitude for God’s infinite patience, mercy, and
grace.
“Richard Lovelace again observes that ‘most’
congregations of professing Christians today are saturated with a kind of dead
goodness and ethical respectability, which has its motivational roots in the
flesh rather than in the Holy Spirit.
Surface righteousness does not spring from faith and the spiritual
renewing action but from religious pride and conditioned conformity to
tradition as a form of godliness which denies its power.’ He describes such religion as ‘counterfeit
piety.’”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I have been
praying for revival in a very small group at our church, sometimes only two
people, for over a year now and so this last section has brought some
conviction to me, along with thankfulness for reading it.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to work on my memory verses,
continuing to rely on the Lord for struggles that I am going through, praying
that the Lord will give me victory and that the Lord will use me to bring glory
to His Son, my Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.
1/4/2023 11:46 AM
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