SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/3/2019 7:29 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The
Necessary Foundation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 5:21
Message of the verse: “And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.”
We began to look at the background for this section in
our last SD as we will begin to be prepared with what Paul has to say about our
relationship with wives and husbands and also our children, and then those we
work for after this statement found in 5:21 as this verse is a transition to
what we have just written, and this subject will be discussed between Ephesians
5:22-6:9.
One of the greatest problems we face in our country is
the breakdown of the traditional family.
Good families are crucial to making a good country, but when we see the
millions of families who grow up without a father involved, and then this makes
it necessary for the mother to work to fend for the family, which means that
the children are many times unattended and so grow up pretty much on their own. In my family of five my father worked full
time, and my mother stayed at home to care for us children. I remember a time when I had a friend whose
mother worked outside the home and she asked my mother to care for her son. My father would have nothing to do with this
as he said that the mother should stay home and care for her own child. In my family there were two children to care
for and my wife stayed home to care for them.
I on the other hand had to spend many hours at work in order to give our
children a good Christian education, and then a good college education. In some ways this was hard on our family, but
it was far better than having my wife work outside the home.
John MacArthur writes the following from his commentary
which actually came from his many sermons on the book of Ephesians, and those
sermons were given sometime in the late 1970’s.
“Among the worst tragedies of our day is the progressive death of the
family as it has been traditionally known.
Marital infidelity, exaltation of sexual sin, homosexuality, abortion,
women’s liberation, delinquency, and the sexual revolution in general have all
contributed to the family’s demise. Each
one is a strand in the cord that is rapidly strangling marriage and the
family.”
He goes on a little later to write “Without a proper
basis of authority for relationships, people grope for meaningful, harmonious,
fulfilling relationships by whatever means and arrangements they can find or
devise. Experimentation is their only
resource and disintegration of the family—and ultimately of society in
general—is being disclosed as the inevitable consequence.”
We who are believers need to stand up and tell others
about what the Bible has to say about how families are to operate. I realize that in our day and age we live in
that we are subjected to ridicule, but that comes with the territory of being a
true believer.
Another
problem is that these confusions about how the family should operate is making
its way, and has been for many years, into the church. It is not uncommon to have a gay woman
“pastor” in churches today. This breaks
two rules of what the Bible has to say about being a Pastor. One is that women are not to be Pastors, and
to find out the truth of this one needs to go to the qualifications of being a
Pastor that Paul writes in what is called his “Pastoral Letters,” as seen in
his letters to Timothy and Titus. The
other rule is about homosexual relationships, which are prohibited in the
Bible, both Old and New Testaments.
Remember the story in Genesis of God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. Also Paul
writes about this issue in the first chapter of Romans1: “26 For this reason
God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural
function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men
abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward
one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty
of their error” (Rom. 1:26-27) In the MacArthur Study Bible he writes about
what is meant by this highlighted portion from verse 27 and states that Aids
fits into this statement. If these
verses are not bad enough to explain the downfall of the family and thus a
country we then read verse 32, which is where we will end our discussion for
today: “32 and
although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things
are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to
those who practice them.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I realize that things in our country are
looking not so good, and I have to say that it truly bothers me very much, but
the best thing that I can do is to pray about it and tells others the good news
of the gospel.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust that the Lord will keep me filled with
His Spirit today in order that I can demonstrate humility in my life today.
Today’s quotation comes from D. L. Moody
who stated “If you pray for bread and bring no basket to carry it, you prove
the doubting spirit which may be the only hindrance to the gift you ask.”
8/3/2019 8:07 AM
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