PT-4 "Loves Abundance" (Eph. 3:17b-19a)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/14/2019 10:09 AM

My Worship Time                                                                       Focus:  PT-4 “Loves Abundance”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 3:17b-19a

            Message of the verses:  “being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,”

            We ended our last SD talking about the words “breadth and length and height and dept” as seen in verse 18 but as John MacArthur states he does not believe that these represent four specific types or categories of love but simply suggest its vastness and completeness. No matter what way we go we can see God’s love.  For instance when we see that Jews and Gentiles in one body, the church we get a picture of the breadth of God.  We can see God’s length in Him choosing us before the foundation of the world, and for that salvation will last for eternity, which has no end.  In Ephesians 1:3 we get an example of God height of love “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”  This can also be seen in Eph. 2:6 “and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  When I think of the depth of God’s love I think of Psalm 40.  “I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. 2 He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in the LORD. 4 How blessed is the man who has made the LORD his trust, And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood. 5 Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done, And Your thoughts toward us; There is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, They would be too numerous to count (Psalm 40:1-5).”

            Ephesians 2:1-3 also speak of God’s depth of love:  “1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”

            John MacArthur writes “In what may at first seems a self-contradiction, Paul says that ‘to know the love of Christ…surpasses knowledge.’  Knowing Christ’s ‘love’ takes us beyond human ‘knowledge,’ because it is from an infinity higher source.  Paul is not speaking here of our knowing the love we are to have for Christ but the ‘love of Christ,’ His very own love that He must place in our hearts before we can love Him or anyone else.  We are commanded to love because we are given love.  God always gives before He commands anything in return, and love is one of Christ’s greatest gifts to His church.  Throughout John 14-16 Jesus promises to give love, joy, peace, power and comfort without measure to those who belong to Him.”

            In order for the world to understand the great love that Christ give they would have to be one of His children.  A non-believer cannot understand it because they are not in Christ.  It seems to me that the unbelieving world who has no problem in saying “God is love” only wants to manipulate believers into doing something that they want them to do, but in the end they do not understand God’s love and they surely do not understand His wrath and judgment. The only kind of love that the world understands is I will do something for you as long as you do something for me, and that is not agape love.  Worldly love only lasts until it is offended or rebuffed, but Christ’s love last despite every offense and every rebuff.  Worldly love loves for what it can get, while Christ’s love for what it can give.  What is incomprehensible to the world is to be normal living for the child of God.

            We have two more sub-sections in this chapter on “The Fulness of God,” and hopefully this will only take two days to complete.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I am thankful that God has not commanded me to give love until after He has given me love.  “Love insists we do something.  Feelings follow action.  Feelings are the fruit, not the root, of love.  If you give your enemy something to eat or drink something happens to your feelings.  When you invest yourself in someone, you begin to feel differently toward him or her.”  This comes from the booklet “Love in Action” by David Jeremiah.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Remember the truth of Romans 12:3.

Scripture that goes along with yesterdays quote:  “Give instruction to a wise man and he will be yet wiser; teach a just man and he will increase in learning (Proverbs 9:9).”

2/14/2019 10:44 AM

PT-3 "Loves Abundance" (Eph. 3:17b-19a)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/13/2019 7:58 AM

My Worship Time                                                                       Focus:  PT-3 “Loves Abundance”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 3:17b-19a

            Message of the verses:  “and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,”

            I think it would be fair to say that the last two SD’s on this section from Ephesians 3:17b-19a have been like an introduction to these verses.  As we look at the last half of verse seventeen and then verse eighteen we could ask a question.  What happens when we as believers are “rooted and grounded in love?”  The answer is seen in verse 18 as we become “able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and dept” of love.  We have to be immersed in love before we can comprehend its fullness and it as to be the very root and ground of our being.  John MacArthur writes “When someone asked the famed jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong to explain jazz, he replied, ‘Man, if I got to explain it, you ain’t got it.’  In some ways that simplistic idea applies to love.  It cannot truly be understood and comprehended until it is experienced.  Yet the experience and working of love that Paul is talking about in this passage is not emotional or subjective.  It is not nice feeling or warm sentiments that bring such comprehension, but the actual working of God’s Spirit and God’s Son in our lives to produce a love that is pure and sincere, selfless and serving.  To be ‘rooted and grounded in love’ requires being rooted and grounded in God.  When we are saved, God’s love is ‘poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us’ (Rom. 5:5).  It is the Lord Himself who directs our ‘hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ’ (2 Thess. 3:5).”

            Why is love available to every Christian?  The answer is that Christ is available to every Christian.  Paul writes that believers will become “able to comprehend with all the saints” and he is not saying just the even tempered Christian or the naturally pleasant and agreeable Christian, but “all the saints.”  He is not talking only about some supposed special class of Christians who have an inside spiritual track either, for it is for and also commanded of every Christian as he states “all the Christians.” 

            For this to happen to us as believers we have to be continually immersed in the things of God and the best way to do that is to be in His Word.  Jeremiah wrote “Thy words were found and I ate them and Thy words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I have been called by Thy name, O Lord God of hosts (Jeremiah 15:16).”  Job said “I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” in Job 23:12.  The psalmist tells us that the delight of the righteousness person “is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” Psalm 1:2.

            As we look at comprehending “what is the breadth and length and height and dept” of love we will understand its fulness.  Love goes in every direction and to the greatest distance.  We can see this in what God did for us by sending His Son to earth and taking our place by dying on the cross to pay for our sins, and know that He went all the way for us because of His great love for us, His love was full. 

            We will attempt to finish this section on love in our next SD.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I have a friend who demonstrates Christ’s love by standing out in all kinds of weather talking to woman who are about to have their babies killed through abortion.  I have begun to pray for her daily, especially on Wednesday’s as she will be out there today sharing the love of Christ in all of its fulness to those who believe that they have the right to commit murder.  I don’t know how many babies that the Lord has allowed her to save, but I do know that it is because of her love for the Lord that she does what she does.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  That Christ will fill me with His love today and every day.

Today’s quote:  “The wise man is he who has given himself to Jesus Christ, and who, by the help of the Holy Spirit, keeps his intellect in submission to the will of God.”  (Spiros Zodiates) 

Bible verse that goes along with this quote in our next SD.

2/13/2019 8:34 AM

PT-2 "Loves Abundance" (Eph. 3:17b-19a)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/12/2019 10:19 AM

My Worship Time                                                                       Focus:  PT-2 “Loves Abundance”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 3:17b-19a

            Message of the verses:  “and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19  and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,”

            We ended our last SD talking about agape love, and I want to add that agape love is a matter of the will and it is not a matter of feeling or emotion, though deep feelings and emotions almost always accompany love.  I suppose that John 3:16 is the classic text on God loving the world, and this was not just a matter of feeling; however it did result in God sending His Son to redeem the world.  John 15:13 says “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”  It does not say “Greater love has no one than to have warm feelings for his friends,” and there is a huge difference there.

            Jesus Christ obeyed the will of His Father by coming to earth to die for all those who would turn to Him and trust Him for their salvation.  This was action and this action is described by Paul in his letter to the Philippians.  Phil. 2:5-8 says “5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  This describes the action that Christ took in dying for us.

            This kind of love does not come natural to believers as it has to be given to us by the Spirit of God as He works in our life to accomplish it in us.  John MacArthur writes “We can only love as Christ loves when He has free reign in our hearts.  ‘By this,’ John says, ‘the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us…We love, because He first loved us’ (1 John 4:9-12, 19).

            “When the Spirit empowers our lives and Christ is obeyed as the Lord of our hearts, our sins and weaknesses are dealt with and we find ourselves wanting to serve others, wanting to sacrifice for them and serve them—because Christ’s loving nature has truly become our own.  Loving is the supernatural attitude of the Christian, because love is the nature of Christ.  When a Christian does not love he has to do so intentionally and with effort—just as he must do to hold his breath.  To become habitually unloving he must habitually resist Christ as the Lord of his heart.  To continue the analogy to breathing, when Christ has his proper place in our hearts, we do not have to be told to love—just as we do not have to be told to breathe.  Eventually it must happen, because loving is as natural to the spiritual person as breathing is to the natural person.”

            One may think that this kind of love does not always happen in the life of the believer, especially when it comes to relationships in the home between a husband and a wife.  Husbands are commanded to love (agape) their wives, which is different than the romantic kind of love that husbands and wives have for each other.  Paul talks about this later on in this letter to the Ephesians, 5:25, 28. 

            This kind of love applies to everyone with whom the believer has contact, especially his fellow Christians.  Loving other is an act of obedience, and not loving them is an act of disobedience. 

            John MacArthur writes that “The absence of love is the presence of sin.  The absence of love has nothing at all to do with what is happening to us, but everything to do with what is happening in us.  Sin and love are enemies, because sin and God are enemies.  They cannot coexist.  Where one is, the other is not. The loveless life is the ungodly life; and the godly life is the serving, caring, tenderhearted, affectionate, self-giving, self-sacrificing life of Christ’s love working through the believer.”

            The following quote comes from “Love in Action” by David Jeremiah, the same little book that I quoted from yesterday.  “Believers are to follow the way of love, to do everything in love, to serve on another in love, to live a life of love, to speak the truth in love, to put on love, to pursue love, to spur one another on to love, and to love not only in words but in actions and truth.”

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Loving does not come natural to believers because of still having the old nature, and so loving one another has to come from the Lord as His Spirit fills us.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust that the Lord will continue to work in my heart the truths of Romans 12:3.

Scripture verse from yesterday’s quote:  “He who answer a matter before he hears it, it is a folly and a shame to him (Proverbs 18:13).”

2/12/2019 10:55 AM

PT-1 "Loves Abundance" (Eph. 3:17b-19a)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/11/2019 8:33 AM

My Worship Time                                                                       Focus:  PT-1 “Loves Abundance”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                           Reference:  Ephesians 3:17b-19a

            Message of the verses:  “and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,”

            We have been studying about being made strong inwardly by God’s Spirit and this will lead to Christ being at home in our hearts, which will then lead to love that is incomprehensible.  MacArthur writes “The result of our yielding to the Spirit’s power and submitting to Christ’s lordship in our hearts is ‘love.’  When Christ settles down in our lives He begins to display His own love in us and through us.  When He freely indwells our hearts, we become rooted and ‘grounded in love,’ that is, settled on a strong foundation of love.”

            In John’s gospel chapter 13 and verse 34 we read “A new commandment I give you that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”  Peter writes “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart (1 Pet. 1:22).  We realize, especially from our study in Ephesians, that it is the great desire of God that His children sincerely and fully love each other, in the same way that He loves us, and that is unconditional.  When we look at the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23 we find that love is listed first, and then the rest of the fruit is then listed.  Think of the fruit of the Spirit as an orange and when one thinks of an orange they perhaps think of all the different aspects as a part of the orange, like the outer skin, and then the other parts under that like the white part and then the different slices that are found under the skin.  However all is actually an orange, and so when we look at the fruit of the Spirit it is only one fruit and not the fruits of the spirit with love at the beginning, and then we find joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control and they are essentially subcategories of love.

            I have a little book written by David Jeremiah entitled “Love in Action,” and what my plans are is to quote different sections of this book once we run out of quotes and the verses that go along with the quotes.  At the beginning of this little book we see a quote from C. Neil Strait which reads “Love is the one ingredient of which our world never tires and of which there is never an abundance.  The world will never outgrow its need for love.”

            I will close this rather short SD with a quote from this little book:  “Agape is love that comes from a God who is love.  It is love lavished upon others without a thought of whether they are worthy to receive it.  It is this kind of love that is to characterize the Christian.  This is totally selfless love that comes from God.  Agape is te power that moves us to respond to someone’s needs with no expectation of reward.  At least fifty-five times in the New Testament we are commanded to love.  It is one of Scripture’s most repeated, inescapable directives for the believer.  It touches us in all of our relationships and affects us in each of the many roles we play as parents, spouses, children, friends, and fellow believers.  It even defines the way we are to respond to our enemies.” 

            I think this quote goes well with what we are now studying from Ephesians.

Quote for Today:  “If thou thinkest twice, before thou speakest once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it.”  (William Penn)

Scripture verse that goes along with this quote in our next SD.

2/11/2019 8:59 AM

           

PT-2 "Christ's Indwelling" (Eph. 3:17a)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/10/2019 9:26 PM

My Worship Time                                                                     Focus:  PT-2 “Christ’s indwelling”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Ephesians 3:17a

            Message of the verse:  “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;”

            I mentioned in our last SD that we would look at some of the things that are in a booklet entitled “My Heart Christ’s Home” written by Robert Munger.  What happened yesterday is that while I was walking on my treadmill I was listening to John MacArthur’s sermon on this section of Scripture, something that helps me better understand what I am studying at the time, and while doing this he went on to talk for a bit about this booklet, and so I thought that I would quote from that section in order to give us all a better understanding of what Munger was writing about.

“Some of you have read the little booklet called "My Heart Christ's Home." If you haven't you ought to get it and read it. That's a good little booklet. I read it many, many years ago when I was just a kid. And it's ... it makes a person's heart, does a kind of allegory to where a person's heart and life is like a house. And Jesus comes to the house and starts it out. The fact that Jesus is there indicates the person is a Christian. And Robert Munger who wrote the book describes it this way. First Jesus went into the library which is the control room of the house. Right? What you read. Which is like the brain. Where all the information is stored. And Jesus goes into the room that is the mind, the brain, and he finds on the shelves all kinds of trash and garbage and junk and evil and bad thinking and bad human philosophy and useless stuff, stuff that is not going to help you. A lot of neutral things and He just takes it all off the shelves, throws it away and puts the Word up there. See. The control room. Then He goes to the dining room. And the dining room is the room of the appetite. Right? And the room of the desires. What do you really feast on? What do you really hunger for? What do you really want? And he finds a worldly menu. A menu of riches, a menu that includes prestige, a menu that includes things, materialism, lust of the flesh and He takes it all out, everything out of there, and puts a new menu in and it is the food that really satisfies the will of the Father. Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So the library is cleaned up and the Word is there. And the dining room is cleaned up and the only thing on the menu is the will of God. And you can get it in any different shape and form you want it but it's all the will of God. And so the will of God becomes that for which you hunger, not your own fleshly desires.

“Then Jesus goes to the living room because the living room is where you share and you fellowship and He goes in there and He finds that that's where He's neglected. There's a lot of activity going on but nobody pays any attention to Him. He's just there. And all the fellowship and all the action that is going on, He's just there. I mean, you imagine that. Just think of it this way. Imagine the best friend you have, spend an entire day with you from dawn till midnight. The whole day. At your side the whole time. And all the while loving you, and all the while wanting to say to you you know, here's a good thing to do...oh, I don't think you should do that ... I'd like to encourage you to do this. Well, all day long you never bother to even acknowledge the presence of your friend. You never even said hello. You just went about your business, some­ times giving an elbow, stepping on a toe. Just complete ... how long do you think that person would be your friend? About one day. Probably be pretty disillusioned. Jesus is the same kind of a friend only in a greater way. And it's very likely as near as one day last week He spent an entire day with you through which you never one time bothered to acknowledge His presence. Never one time. And yet He's your friend forever. It's a good think it's based on Him and not you. Right?

“And so the living room is a place of fellowship. But you've got to have the right fellowship. And so this is where you need to spend time with Christ. And you can clear out a lot of those worldly acquaintances. And a lot of that wasted activity, and a lot of that stuff that doesn't have any redeeming virtue at all and spend your time with Christ and... listen to this, spend your time with people who have Christ living in them. See. "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as a manner of some is and much the more as you see the day approaching because this is necessary to provoke yourselves to love and good works." Spend time with Jesus and spend time with people that Jesus lives in. Very important.

“Well, then He goes to the workshop. And He goes to the workshop and He finds fantastic tools, beautiful work bench. And the guy is in there making toys. Just toys. And Jesus says you've-got all this ability and you can't produce anything more than a toy? Jesus wants to take all your abilities, all your capacities, all your capabilities and cause them to produce things for the Kingdom. Cause them to lay up treasure in heaven, cause them to make things that have eternal value. So He changes the whole format in the workshop. He gets all done. I mean, the library's all fixed; it's got the right kind of stuff up there to control everything. The dining room is great, we've got the appetites all set on the will of God. The living room is settled, we're in there fellowshipping with Christ and people Christ lives in. And the workshop is ready; we're down there using our tools and our abilities to make things for the kingdom. But there's a strange odor coming from someplace. Nice and clean but something stinks. You know, like when the meat leaked under the ice box, or whatever. And the Lord isn't too happy. There's something dead in here, He says. And the guy says - Look, You come into my house. You clean up everything. I mean, leave me one closet, will You? That's all I ask. You can have the dining room and all this stuff, just ... that's my closet. The Lord says No, I want that closet. That's the closet full of personal sins, the hidden things, the dead things. And the man became very angry because Jesus had every other room but Jesus gave him a command - Open it! And he opened it and it was full of evil things. Those little secret things that nobody knows about, those things that go on in your mind. Those things that you do when nobody sees you do them. And Jesus cleaned that out. And when He got all that done-then He was at home. See?”

            I have mentioned before that when I quote from MacArthur’s sermons that whatever he says in the sermon is exactly what is printed on his website even if the English is not proper.  However I think that we can learn from these quotes even if the grammar is not perfect.

Verse that went with our last quote:  “Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’  ‘What shall we wear?’…For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things (Matthew 6:31-32).”

2/10/2019 9:40 PM

PT-1 "Christ's Indwelling"

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/9/2019 10:14 AM

My Worship Time                                                                     Focus:  PT-1 “Christ’s Indwelling”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                  Reference:  Ephesians 3:17a

            Message of the verses:  “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;”

            MacArthur writes “so ‘that’ translates hina, a Greek word used to introduce purpose clauses.  The purpose of being ‘strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man’ is ‘that Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith.’”

            Paul is not writing about Christ’s indwelling believers in salvation here, but indwelling them for the purpose of sanctification.  We have mentioned that sanctification involves three stages:  First we are sanctified at salvation, that is set apart to Christ, second we have what is called a progressive sanctification, that is speaking of our spiritual growth, and thirdly we will be perfectly sanctified when we get to heaven.

            MacArthur writes “katoikeo (‘dwell’) is a compound word, formed from ‘kata (Down) and oikeo (to inhabit a house).  In the context of this passage the connotation is not simply that of being inside the house of our ‘hearts’ but of being at home there, settled down as a family member.  Christ cannot be ‘at home’ in our hearts until our inner person submits to the strengthening of His Spirit.  Until the Spirit controls our lives, Jesus Christ cannot be comfortable there, but only stays like a tolerated visitor.  Paul’s teaching here does not relate to the fact of Jesus’ presence in the hearts of believers but to the quality of His presence.”

            It looks like that I will make this rather short section of Scripture into two Spiritual Diaries because of the fact that it is the week-end and I try to do shorter SD’s on the week-end because of studying more intensely for my Sunday school class.  I will close this SD with a story that goes along with Christ feeling at home in our hearts, and it comes from Genesis chapters 18 and 19.

            In the eighteenth chapter of Genesis we find a story that tells of the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ and two angels coming to meet with Abraham and his wife Sarah.  It was the heat of the day when they came to meet Abraham and Sarah and so it was a time of resting and keeping out of the sun, but as soon as they got there Abraham asked Sarah to get food for them.  It did not take too long for Abraham and Sarah to realize that they were being visited by God, and so they tried to make Him home in their house, or in this case “their tent.”  The second Person of the Godhead was telling Abraham what He was planning to do to Sodom and Gomorrah as there were wicked people in that city.  Abraham fearing for his nephew Lot began to talk to the Lord, actually trying to bargain with Him beginning with saying if there were fifty people would He destroy the city, and going down to ten, but there were not ten righteous people there. 

            The Lord did not go to visit Lot even though he was a believer as He sent His two angels to visit Lot and his family.  The Lord did not feel at home in Lot’s house as He did in Abraham and Sara’s house.

            In our next SD we will look for a bit at a book that was written by Robert Munger, My Heart Christ’s Home.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  It is a very important thing for Christ in the Person of the Holy Spirit to be at home in my heart, in my home.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Continue to learn more about Romans 12:3.

Today’s quote:  “Worry is an old man with bended head, carrying a load of feathers which he thinks are lead (Corrie Ten Boom).”

PT-8 "The Spirit's Power" (Eph. 3:14-16)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/8/2019 9:58 AM

My Worship Time                                                                     Focus:  PT-8 “The Spirit’s Power”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Ephesians 3:14-16

            Message of the verses:  “14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15  from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, 16  that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,”

            In our last SD I promised to quote the ending from John MacArthur’s rather long commentary on this subject.  I have mentioned the importance of this section as I remarked on the fact that the first two and a half chapters of Ephesians were written to mostly show us, who are believes what we have in Christ, and not Paul prays that what he explained in theses first two and a half chapters to become a part of the believers walk with the Lord.  We have to understand what Paul first writes which we took a bit over three months to go over, and now as we study this wonderful pray of Paul we can pray ourselves that God will make this prayer true in our lives.

            “When the ‘inner man’ is feed regularly on the Word of God and seeks the Spirits will in all the decisions of life, the believer can be sure he will be ‘strengthened with power through His Spirit.’  Spiritual power is not the mark of a special class of Christian but is the mark of every Christian who submits to God’s Word and Spirit.  Like physical growth and strength, spiritual growth and strength do not come overnight.  As we discipline our minds and spirits to study God’s Word, understand it, and live by it, we are nourished and strengthened.  Every bit of spiritual food and every bit of spiritual exercise add to our strength and endurance.

            “Spiritual growth can be defined as the decreasing frequency of sin. The more we exercise our spiritual muscles, yielding to the Spirit’s control of our lives, the less sin is present.  Where the strength of God increases, sin necessarily decreases.  The nearer we come to God, the further we go from sin.

            “As that occurs, what happens to the outer man matters less and less.  Paul could tell the Corinthians,

8 We are hard-pressed on all sides, but we are never frustrated; we are puzzled, but never in despair. 9 We are persecuted, but are never deserted: we may be knocked down but we are never knocked out! 10 Every day we experience something of the death of Jesus, so that we may also show the power of the life of Jesus in these bodies of ours. 11 Yes, we who are living are always being exposed to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be plainly seen in our mortal lives. 12 We are always facing physical death, so that you may know spiritual life…16 This is the reason why we never lose heart. The outward man does indeed suffer wear and tear, but every day the inward man receives fresh strength (2 Cor. 4:8-12, 16 Phillips).’”

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  What I have been publishing in my other blog seems to me, that it goes along with what this section is about as they both are about spiritual growth. 5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love (2 Peter 1:5-7).”

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Give myself to the Lord today to be used of Him as He sees fit.

Verse that goes along with yesterday’s quote:  “Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls (Proverbs 25:28).”

2/8/2019 10:21 AM