SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/4/2014 8:31 AM (Used again on 01-20-21)
My Worship Time Focus: The Progress and Pressure of Excelling
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1Thess.
4:1c, 2
Message of the
verses: “(just as you actually do walk),
that you excel still more. 2 For you
know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.”
I have been going over the actual sermon that John
MacArthur gave on these two verses back in 1990 looking for a grammatical part
that he spoke about, and to be perfectly honest I could not find it and also it
was something that I had a difficulty in understanding. It was suppose to go in yesterday’s SD, but
because I did not understand it I did not include it. I will continue to look for the section in
the sermon and perhaps get some help from my Pastor so that I can better
understand it and then comment on it in a latter SD.
As we begin today’s SD we will be discussing the fact
that our walk with the Lord, and we call this walk with the Lord part of our
sanctification process as we continue to grow in the Lord. It does not happen overnight and I can give
two examples of this, one from the title of a book by Chuck Swindoll which is
called “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back,” and the other is more familiar to us
and that is “The successful Christian life is a series of new beginnings.” If we were looking at a graph on our
Spiritual growth it probably will have peaks and valleys, but looking at the
overall progress it should be going upward.
Paul calls our relationship with the Lord a “walk” and that is surely a
good way to describe it. When we are
first saved we then begin to go on a walk with the Lord. The book of Genesis has a good description of
this when we read “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him (Genesis
5:24).” When I was a new believer I was
listening to a sermon by my pastor who spoke on the subject of Enoch and he
said that every day he would walk with God and one day God said that we are
closer to my home than yours so just come home with me. That is the goal of our walk with the Lord,
to get closer to knowing the Lord, not just to know about His Word, but use His
Word to know about Him. This is what
Paul is telling the Thessalonians when he tells them “to excel still
more.” They were surely a model church,
not like the church at Galatia where he stated you began really well, but what
happened to you. Paul wrote to the
Corinthian church “24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but
only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. 25 Everyone
who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it
to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 Therefore I run in such a way, as not without
aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; 27 but I discipline my body and make it my
slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be
disqualified.”
John MacArthur writes:
“The pressure for the Thessalonians to stay on the path of righteousness
and excel more and more in their walk with Christ derived from the fact that
they knew what commandments Paul gave them by the authority of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Christ Himself authorized Paul’s
exhortation to the church in Thessalonica.
Commandments (parangelias) refers to strong, authoritative directives
delivered by a commanding officer to his subordinates. That meant the church could not take the
apostle’s admonition lightly. He not only
reminded them of the various commandments he gave them, as he implicitly did
concerning his earlier instructions to them, but he also reminded them of the
divine authority by which he ministered.
Paul’s directions did not originate from some arbitrary human sanction
or some remote ecclesiastical authority.
Instead, they came from the authority of the Lord Jesus, and obedience
to them was mandatory.”
Basically what we are saying here is that if you want to
grow you have to know. If you want to
grow up in the Lord you have to know His Word so that you can know Him better,
after all what is more important.
My Steps of Faith
for Today: As I am studying this
section of 1 Thessalonians the Lord seems to be impressing to me to get to know
Him better. I have had somewhat of a
difficult time in making relationships that are good and lasting, and so I
began to think about this today while having my prayer time. I spoke to the Lord in my prayer time that He
is the author of relationships and that the best way to know how to have good
relationships is to study from His Word on how to do that. As I look at the three Persons of the Trinity
I see a perfect relationship there and this is a pattern to follow.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Work on my relationship with the Lord and
also with my wife and friends.
Memory verses for the week:
Philippians 2:5-8
5 Have this attitude in
yourself 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 on the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness
of men. 8 Being found in appearance of
man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death
on a cross.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Lice” (Exodus 7:12).
Today’s Bible
question: “When should Christians
rejoice?”
Answer in our next SD.
6/4/2014 9:12 AM
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