Scriptural Application

This morning I was having a hard time keeping my mind on God and off of my sinful desires. Nobody ever said the Christian walk would be easy.

I have been having such a great past couple of weeks. The many many ways God has been working both through the lives of others and through my life have been indescribable and I'm going to try to stay away from mentioning them all to keep on task with the point I want to make.

With all the things God has been doing and how much I've been realizing it, I knew it was due to the time He has allowed me to spend in His Word. This morning in particular, I was struggling a lot keeping my mind pure, and I knew I had to dive into the Word, the Bible, and use it as intended in Ephesians 6. It talks about The Word of God being the sword of the spirit. A sword in battle is your weapon and also works defensively. It's the one piece in the armor of God that can be used as a weapon. I had to attack my feelings and longings of the flesh (my old sinful self), and I knew I could not do it on my own.

So I knew that the book of Second Peter had some relevant information in it for what I was going through in particular. I opened it up and started reading in chapter 1.

I CANNOT believe how completely relevant it was to my life. Almost every verse in that chapter stuck out to me in the current situation I was in. Let me start going through it a bit.

2 Peter 1:1-2 is more of an introduction, which has value and I encourage you to read it on your own to think about that. I read on to the next paragraph which is verses 3 and 4 which say:

3His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
- 2 Peter 1:3-4

So in verse 3, where it says "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness...", that really emphasizes that it is not in my own power that I can overcome sin, it's through God's power. That is an encouraging start. Then in verse 4 it says we can escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. I like to read it backwards and say how do we do that? It is by His own glory and goodness through which He has given us his very great and precious promises which we have to stand on! This was awesome to me!

Now I want to look at verses 5-7:

5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.
- 2 Peter 1:5-7

This never stuck out to me so much as this time. For the reason of escaping the corruption in the world caused by evil desires, which I was having, it says make every effort to add to your faith goodness. Well, I have been trying to add to my faith goodness, and then from goodness, knowledge. I've been in the Word a LOT this week because God has really been working on me and may all the glory to go Him for it! The Bible is knowledge, so I've been adding to my faith knowledge and to my knowledge self-control. Now this past week, as a result of being in the Word and building up knowledge, I have become more self-controlled thanks to God. Now the hard part comes in. It says and to self-control, perseverance. Wow. Now I had just been talking to someone online about how perseverance is not something you learn overnight... in fact it's impossible to really learn it because you have to persevere to learn it and that takes time. It was at this point I realized I really needed to persevere. I needed to say no to the sinful desires I had and turn to God and count on Him to deliver me.

What comes after perseverance? It says "and to perseverance, godliness". I want my life to be characterized by godliness. I want the glory of God to shine through me and if I want that, I do not want to give into my sinful desires which takes away from perseverance which takes away from godliness. These all build on each other. After godliness, then brotherly kindness. I need to learn to persevere and grow closer to God so I can share Him with others and show my brothers kindness that comes from God that I could not have on my own. Finally, after brotherly kindness, comes love. God is love.

In my cell group tonight, we talked about how the world defines love and how the Bible defines love and they are very different. Everyone usually thinks of love as doing nice things for others or romantic love based on feelings. True love comes from God and God alone through Christ. God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Christ died for us. God's one and only Son, Jesus Christ died for us. He became the sin for us who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. It's all through Jesus that we have any hope. So this is how God shows us His love. We are called to love others as God loves us. Wow. Let that soak in for a second. True love is selfless, kind, does not envy, does not boast. True love is shown in a willingness to lay down your life for a friend.

So, to give into my sinful desires that might bring me brief fleeting temporary happiness but ultimately lead to destruction and emptiness, would bring me away from God who is love. Love never fails. It's in the Bible in I Corinthians 13 which I would highly encourage you to read on your own.

Let's go on to 2 Peter 1:8-9

8For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

A possession of the increased measure of the qualities talked about earlier will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. I want to be effectual and productive for Christ, so I need to be putting off the old sinful desires and putting on the New self created to be like Jesus in true Righteousness and Holiness. Then it goes on to say in verse 9 that if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind. This is truth! If you want immediate pleasure now, then that shows nearsightedness. Sometimes I forget that I have been cleansed from my past sins. I need to look towards who God wants me to be and focus on the true joy I find in Him!

Now to move onto verses 10 and 11.

10Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, 11and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
- 2 Peter 1:10-11

Therefore, in other words, because of what was previously said, we should be all the more eager to make sure of our calling and election. It is fully up to God to draw us to Him and I am so incredibly grateful He has called me. Then it says "for if you do these things, you will never fall." Well. I think that's pretty straight forward. If I focus on God, stay in the Word, learn to Love others through self-control and perseverance, then I will never fall. It's when I lack these things when I stumble.

Then comes verse 11. "and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Wow! Look at what we have to look forward to. We can have an eternity of life in Christ praising God in Heaven and it will be a rich welcome. Now in light of this, do the sinful desires still seem worth it? I would say 100% not.

Please keep me in your prayers. Pray that I may continue to strive towards the prize, that being Christ Jesus, putting aside all my sinful desires and fully seek after God so I can be an effective witness of His return to call his children home!

The joy of my Salvation!

This weekend was up there as one of the best weekends of my life. Mike Baumgartner wanted to visit his home, but had no car. He lives in Iron River which is around a couple of hours away, and I personally wanted to go on a little road trip with someone and visit them at their home, so I told him I'd be willing to drive him home whatever weekend he wants as long as he wouldn't mind me staying there with their family over the weekend. Well, this weekend, he took me up on the offer so we went to visit his house and his family.

One thing I really like about Mike and Matt Baumgartner is their passion for God. We did some other things like ping pong, playing settlers and hiking around in their yard on the beautiful day outside, but most of the time, we were focused on God digging into his Word and just talking about Theology and about God in general. I really appreciate it and love it. I wish it would happen more around here at Tech. It's something I need to make an effort to do.

So, along with so much time with God and focusing on Him, their mom also made some REALLY good food, so I was well fed and I had Mike's bedroom to myself and I really felt at home and enjoyed the company of his whole family. Their dad also fixed the muffler on my car which was falling off, so it was awesome. I also got to help them out in the sense that I vacuumed a lot of their sanctuary at their church and it was a joy to help out after all they did for me.

Over this weekend, we also visited Matt and Mike's Sunday School teacher/church deacon's house to play settlers with him and talk to him about theology and God. His name is Nathan and he's a REALLY knowledgeable man in terms of Biblical knowledge, so to hear his insight on questions that Mike and Matt had was really good. I got a lot out of it and really enjoyed the fellowship.

In one of the mini-Bible studies we did with just Matt, Mike and me, we talked about what we would be discussing in Sunday School the next day to be prepared for it and to see what we could get out of it so we could provide some insight when we got there too. It was one of the coolest times in Bible study I've had in a long time and I got a lot of out of and I think these random Bible studies need to happen more.

So overall, my weekend was nothing short of amazing and God-filled and even the car ride talking with Mike both ways was sweet. When I got back to Houghton, I hung out with some people and then went to Vespers and then had a good talk with Titus on the way back to drop him off. When we got to McNair we were talking in the car about life and God and we talked for quite a while which I think both of us really enjoyed.

Then later when I finally got home which was already like 12:30, I ended up talking to my parents about my weekend. Usually I'm just so tired and it's so late that I just go to bed, but I wanted to talk about my weekend, so I did. Then for the first time in my life, I really talked about what God's been doing in my life in some detail and talked to my dad about different ways to interpret the Bible and what he believes, what our church believes and what I believe. I never talked about that before, but God's really been doing a work in my life, so I opened up to them and they really enjoyed talking to me since I usually pass by and go in my room and shut the door. I ended up talking to them until about 2 AM or so and had to quit because I had to wake up at 6:40 in the morning. I then looked at homework I had to do. The night had only just begun. So, I worked on my homework until about 3 AM when I finally got to bed, so I got about 3.5 hours of sleep last night.

Now this morning was quite a difficult morning with so little sleep, yet I knew it was good for me to have talked to my parents whether it was late or not and God helped me to get up and make it to class. Somehow I'm still pretty awake (coffee helps too...). When I went to get the coffee earlier on, I spend that time between classes to read the Bible and pray and it's awesome to see what God's been showing me in that hour every day.

Today, I read John chapters 11 and 12. Now in the Campus Crusade weekly email, they have a Bible verse and this week had an excerpt from John 11 and I thought it was really good and exciting to see the story of Lazerous. Luckily, I just "happened" to be there in my personal study. I'd been going through Luke and now I am going through John and they're amazing! Just reading how much Jesus cared for Lazerous that he actually wept! Jesus truly loves us! There was so much more I got out of it as well and I prayed for about 15 minutes which was amazing just to open up to God and talk to Him and praise Him for the wonderful things He's been doing in my life lately. It was one of the best personal devotion times I've ever had, so God's so relevant and actively working in my life now. It's so exciting to see and I want to share that excitement which is why I am writing this.

There is so much more I can say with details, but I think I pretty well covered it and nobody is going to want to read page after page worth of material in every detail in my life. I guess if you want to talk about it or want prayer for anything, please feel free to talk to me. I love talking to people! God has really brought to me the joy of my salvation! Thanks for reading, and until next time, God Bless!