SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/28/2019 9:43 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Christ Centered”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 4:20
Message of the
verses: “But you did not learn
Christ in this way.”
I want to quote the last thing that we were studying in
our last SD to help keep us on the right track:
“Both the context and the use of the aorist tense of the verb ‘to learn’
in these passages lead to the conclusion that this learning refers to the
moment of saving faith.”
I want to look at James 4:4 which says: “Friendship with
the world is hostility toward God.” I
remember when I first became a believer as I was running around with a crowd of
people that even as a young believer, I knew that I had to sever my
relationship with them. I have to say
that it took some time to do so as for one thing I was working with some of
them and could not just stop talking to them.
I assure you that I did witness to them about their need for salvation,
but none of them wanted to listen to me.
It was a difficult choice to make and it took me a while to do so, but
one of the things that helped me was to make new friends with believers which
the Lord led me to soon after I became a believer. Now if a person who states that they have
become a believer continues to have friendships with the world, and makes no
effort to stop then one has to question whether or not they truly are
believers. Let’s look at 1 John 2:4 and
then 15: “4
The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His
commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;” “15 Do not love the
world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the
Father is not in him.” As we can see
from these verses the ways of the world and they ways of believers are not compatible.
Paul says that we did not learn
Christ this way, and the way that we learn to be a Christian is to first
repent, to agree with God that you are a sinner, and there is nothing in that
you can do on your own to take care of your sin problem, the very nature that
you are born with is sinful and therefore after learning this truth you need to
repent of being a sinner. John MacArthur
writes “The very purpose of receiving Christ is to ‘be saved from this perverse
generation’ (Acts 2:20), and no one is saved who does not repent and forsake
sin. Repentance does not save us, but
God cannot save us from sin of which we are unwilling to let go. To hold on to sin is to refuse God, to scorn
His grace, and to nullify faith. No
Christian is totally from the presence of sin in this life, but in Christ he is
willingly freed from his orientation to sin.
He slips and falls many times, but the determined direction of his life
is away from sin.”
Lord willing we will finish this
section in our next SD.
Quotation for
today comes from John Wesley: “O LORD,
let us not live to be useless, for Christ’s sake.”
4/28/2019 10:05 PM
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