SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/2/2019 1:35 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4
“Equipping”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 4:12
Message of the verses: “12 for the
equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body
of Christ;”
I
mentioned in our last SD that we would continue our discussion on suffering
which is the fourth tool of equipping as we learned from yesterday’s SD. I realize that this is not a popular subject
in many churches today, especially those who tout the health and wealth gospel,
which is not a gospel at all. In this
so-called gospel the people who teach it put God in a box, and demand that He
cure all of our ills and not only that but make us all rich, when in truth
the only ones who are getting rich are
the ones who are teaching it as they tell their audience that if they want to
get rich and want to get cured from their suffering that all they have to do is
to send them some money. This reminds me
of what Martian Luther was up against when he was fighting against Catholic
Church as they were saying that you had to send them money in order for their
members to get into heaven. Peter uses
this word near the close of his first letter:
“And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace,
who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm,
strengthen and establish you” (1 Pet. 5:10).
In Philippians 3:10 we read “that I may know Him and the power of His
resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His
death;” which shows us that Paul rejoiced in his sufferings for Christ. I am not saying that suffering makes you
happy, for as we compare what happened to our Lord Jesus Christ when He
suffered for us we do not see Him happy, but He was full of joy and there is a
difference between being happy and being joyful: “Heb 12:2
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy
set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the
right hand of the throne of God.” We
want to look at another set of verse “Blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who
comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who
are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by
God. 5 For just as the
sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant
through Christ” (2 Cor. 1:3-5).
John
MacArthur writes “The sending of tests and suffering are entirely God’s
operation, and He gives them to His saints according to His loving and
sovereign will. But the other two agents
of spiritual equipping—prayer and knowledge of Scripture—are the tasks of the
gifted men.”
I
want to quote one more paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary as we close this
Spiritual Diary, and with that said I hope to finish this section in our next
SD and then when we look at the next sub-section, “Service” it will be a short
one and hopefully can finish it in one day.
“Like
the apostles in Jerusalem, the pastor-teacher is to devote himself above all
else ‘to prayer, and to the ministry of the word’ (Acts. 6:4). Like Paul, he
should be able to say that his supreme effort is given to ‘admonishing every man
and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man complete
in Christ’ (Col. 1:28). As Paul said of
Epaphras, it should be said of every pastor-teacher that he labors earnestly in
prayer for those given into his care, in order that they ‘may stand perfect and
fully assured in all the will of God’ (Col. 4:12). The devoted pastor-teacher is ‘a good servant
of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the
sound doctrine,’ which he then prescribes, teaches, reads publicly, and exhorts
(1 Tim. 4:6, 11, 13). He is called to
‘preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke,
exhort, with great patience and instruction’ (2 Tim. 4:2).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: No one really likes to suffer, but our
example is the Lord Jesus Christ who came to earth in order to pay for my
salvation as He died on the cross for me, and He suffered much for me by not
only the horrible way that He died on the cross, but also because He became sin
for me so that I may have His righteousness, and while paying for my sin His
father was taking out on Him the wrath that I deserved, and while this went on
He was separated from His Father for the very first time.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust that the Lord will continue to teach
me humility as described in Romans 12:3.
Quotation for today and this one is from
Lord Byron: “Words are things; and a
small drop of ink falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes
thousands, perhaps millions, think.”
4/2/2019 2:06 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment