SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/26/2019 9:19 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Purifying Love”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 5:26-27
Message of the verses: “26 so that He
might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27
that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or
wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”
In
John MacArthur’s commentary he writes about a two Christian couples and their
views on the magazine Playboy, and
the one man stated in an interview that he would never have anything to do with
it, while the other Christian man said that he and his wife read it and I
suppose look at the pictures in it. He
said that it enhances their marriage, however he was certainly wrong about that
and should have been in agreement with the first man. The second man has totally misunderstood
about purifying love for his wife.
Now
there are far too many times that I have seen young men tell young women that
they are in love with them, when in truth they are lusting over them, and of
course this is not a purifying kind of love that they have for them, only
hormonal love. Married men should never
flirt with other women as this is sinful and shows their need to have more of a
purifying love for their wives and could also cause the breakdown of the
marriage if the other woman took this seriously.
John
MacArthur writes “In ancient Greece, a bride-to-be would be taken down to a
river to be bathed and ceremonially cleansed from every defilement of her past
life. Whatever her life had been before,
it was now symbolically purified and she would enter the marriage without any
moral or social blemish—the past was washed away.
“In
an immeasurably greater way Christ gave Himself up for the church, that ‘he
might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or
wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless.’ His cleansing of believers in not ceremonial
and symbolic, but real and complete.
“The soteriological truth in this
analogy is that saving grace makes believers holy through the cleansing agency
of the Word of God, so that they may be presented to Christ as His pure Bride,
forever to dwell in His love. It is with
that same purpose and in that same love that husbands are to cultivate the
purity, righteousness, and sanctity of their wives.”
Now
I have to say that humanly this is totally impossible to do, for one thing in
order to love your wife in this way the first thing that you have to be is a
believer, and the second thing is that you have to have a growing relationship
with the Lord so that you can understand this truth. And another thing that is extremely important
is that you have to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit of God so that
He can live His life through you in order to love your wife as Christ loves the
church.
Spiritual meaning for my life: To continue to learn and understand the
importance of being filled with the Holy Spirit and to learn what my part is in
this.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I have been writing about humility since the
beginning of this year, knowing that humility is very important to be and first
of all to understand it. I can say that
I have learned many things about humility and I can also say that there has
been a great spiritual battle going on inside of me as I am sure that Satan
does not want me to learn about this.
The important thing for me is to learn about being filled with the Holy
Spirit continually so that I can then do the things that God has planned for me
to do in eternity past.
Today’s quotations from “Love in Action”
comes from page 15: “Christ provided
the crowning example of how to respond to our enemies when from the cross He
prayed for those who were abusing Him. And
here in Romans He tells us He died for us even when we were yet His enemies.”
8/26/2019 10:02 AM
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