SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/10/2025 9:57 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-7 “The Teacher”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Timothy 2:2
Message of the
verse: “The
things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men
who will be able to teach others also.”
This is the seventh SD that we have been talking
about teachers, and teachers are very important when it comes to the Word of
God. Let us take a trip back in time,
even before the OT was written, and that means before Moses began to write the
OT. We can see that God always had a witness
to tell others what He was going to do, to tell people how they can have a
relationship with Him. This happened
right from the beginning when Adam and Eve sinned and it went all the way
through the time before the flood as Noah was a person of God who told the
people what was going to happen, and to repent and come to know the Lord, but
no one listened. God destroyed the world
through the flood with only eight people left to begin to repopulate the
earth. Next we see the call of Abram who
would later be named Abraham and so he would begin the people of Israel and
from there God had a witness to tell others about their need for a Savior. Moses wrote about this in Exodus 19:6 “and
you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words
that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.’”
It was not just the priests and prophets, but all the people, were “entrusted
with the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2). MacArthur
writes about this as he states “They were to be a nation of God’s intermediaries and witnesses to the pagan, Gentile
world. Centuries before Christ gave the
Great Commission to His disciples to ‘go therefore and make disciples of all
the nations’ (Matt. 28:19), God had given a similar commission to His chosen
people Israel. Sadly, it was a
commission they had failed to heed and fulfill, and by the time of our Lord,
the leadership of Israel was apostate and satanic (cf. John 8:44).” “"You are of your father the
devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from
the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in
him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is
a liar and the father of lies.”
Now remember the story that MacArthur gave about the
relay race that he ran where the third person in the race just stopped running
because he did not feel like running, well he now writes “The third lap in the
relay is for spiritually mature leaders, or faithful men, who themselves have
been carefully trained, to teach others who show promise. This is just the start of the continuous
process of spiritual reproduction, of being taught and of teaching, that is to
continue until our Lord returns.”
What about just normal everyday true
believers, what is their job to do? Well
a similar process should involve all believers, that is just normal everyday
true believers, as all believers have particular spiritual gifts to be used for
the cause of Christ. Now in the church that
I go to, because it is a Baptist church, and ours has been around since before
the civil war, we have deacons and other
types of church they could be called elders, but these deacons or elders “who
work hard at preaching and teaching” (1 Tim. 5:17). Now to explain in our Baptist church there
are some of the deacons who are either former Pastors or are Pastors at this
time and they do preach and teach at certain times. Some of them teach Sunday school classes but
all are active in what is going on in the church. In my Sunday school class I have a deacon who
begins our class by reading one of the devotions that I copy that come from a
book by John MacArthur, and then he will take prayer requests and pray for
those requests. In our class is also a
couple of retired Pastors, one who worked for Baptist Mid Missions, and one who
was the president of that organization.
It is a very small class but with talented people in the class. In our church we have parents who help out in
Sunday school classes for younger people and also for the youth, those up to
eighteen years old. We have parents and
others who help out in the nursery, and even my 18 year old grandson works
there once a month along with my daughter and he husband. MacArthur writes “Every Christian has such a
responsibility for any brother or sister in Christ whom he has opportunity to
disciple even briefly.”
He concludes this rather long
section by writing “In a still wider sense, every believer has a responsibility
to teach God’s truth to any other believer, even one who is older and more
mature in the faith. Pastors can learn from othe church members, parents can
learn from their children, teachers can learn from their students, wives can
learn from their husbands, husbands can learn from their wives, and friends can
learn from friends.”
I think to sum this up it is
important that every true born-again believer be ready to tell others the truth
of the Gospel and be ready to at least help them to grow in their faith so that
one day they can do the very same thing and that is how it has been especially
throughout the church age.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: One of the reasons that I write Spiritual
Diaries and put them onto my blogs and also onto my FB story is to fulfill what
the Lord said to His disciples in Matthew 28:19-20 “Go therefore and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’” I can only put what I learn onto my blogs and
make sure that what I write is true, and the leave it up to the Holy Spirit of
God to use it in the way that He desires to use it.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: Each day after posting my Spiritual Diaries I
has the Lord to bless what I have written and be blessed by what I have
written, and then there are some five prayer request that I have after that.
1.
I
ask that the Holy Spirit use what I have written to open the eyes of some who
read the Spiritual Diaries to those whom He has called and Jesus died for.
2.
I
ask that the Holy Spirit cause believers to grow in grace and in the knowledge
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
3.
I
ask that the Holy Spirit will bring revival to myself and to those who read these
Spiritual Diaries.
4.
I
ask that the Holy Spirit will continue to send these Spiritual Diaries around
the world.
5.
I
then ask that if is in the will of the Lord that the very last person in the
Church age after reading one of these Spiritual Diaries to receive Christ as
their Lord and Savior so that the rapture will take place.
1/10/2025 10:44 AM
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