Category: Level: Intermediate

Friends people meeting laugh

Spiritual Friends Fulfill Our Hearts- Part One

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Do you ever feel like you want some close spiritual friends you can take off your mask with and open up to? Are you feeling a hole in your spiritual life where spiritual friends should be? We were designed to have close spiritual friends in mutually edifying relationships where we can reveal our true selves and be channels of God’s grace. The New Testament refers to this as fellowship; the Greek word is koinonia, which literally means participation. What does the New Testament teach about fellowship? One of the principles we observe in the Apostle Paul’s life is that we should support one another, especially in troubled times. This is stated plainly in Galatians 5:2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (ESV). This implies that we actually let other people know what our burdens are! Think about how often we don’t do this. How often do Continue Reading →

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Motivated By Our Future Perfection

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What motivates you to holy living? When you are tempted by something that others think is okay, but you know it is unholy, what do you think about in order to strengthen your will and resist temptation? Scripture mentions several different motivations; one of them is the promise of our future perfection: being thoroughly holy and perfect one day. This might not seem logical at first. If God is going to perfect us anyway, why should we make a lot of sacrifice now in order to be holy? Why would the promise of our future perfection and holiness motivate me to be more holy now? We can learn about this from John: “But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” I Jn. 3:3 (NIV) Here God Continue Reading →

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The Trap Of Seeking The Presence Of God

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The greatest blessing in the New Creation will be to see God and be close to Him. Nothing will be better than being in His presence. We long for this and endure sacrifices now so we can present ourselves as pure when Jesus returns and we see God. So, shouldn’t we also be seeking the presence of God (the felt presence of God) in this mortal life? Shouldn’t we desire as much of God as He is willing to give now? Shouldn’t we always be seeking the presence of God? Of course we should. But there is a question as to priority. How high should we prioritize seeking the presence of God? First, we need to ask what we mean when we say the “presence of God.” If someone asks us what this means, we might say we just want whatever He wills. But the reality is that we want Continue Reading →

discernment

Discerning The Voices In Our Head

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“Whose voice is that?” An area that trips up many of us is whether a voice in our head is ours or God’s. Quoting from a previous post: “Our own inner voice is very capable of speaking many things to us! Many confuse it with the voice of God. It can sound like another person talking. It can answer our questions, give direction, give long prophecies, teach us ideas – but none of it is from God. We should never underestimate the power of the human soul to generate all kinds of impressions that may seem like they are not from us. We need to be humble and seriously consider this possibility when doing discernment.” We need to be very honest when discerning the voices. God’s voice usually feels separate from us and produces the fruits of the Spirit. But it is easy to confuse his voice with ours. Discerning the Continue Reading →

two roads discernment

Overcoming A Fault That’s Beyond Your Character

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Have you noticed that sometimes the reason we aren’t overcoming a fault is that we haven’t fully intended to? We make some mild efforts to change but they don’t work. Then one day we decide to put our full effort into it and presto – the fault is gone! But we also have another kind of experience with overcoming a fault: failure, in spite of all our efforts. “I keep trying to stop doing this, but it doesn’t work.” We’ve probably all said this at some point. We ask God for help, read books, study Scripture, and exercise our willpower, but nothing works. And the fault lives on. Why do we have such different experiences with becoming holy? Because some changes are within our character, and some are not. What do I mean by this? There are some changes that God has already equipped us to make, and success is Continue Reading →