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Monday, June 23, 2008
here's my 1st SOT assigment!! be blessed!
The Spirit-Filled Believer’s Handbook is more than just another book you see in a Christian bookstore that promises to help you better walk with God. Just like in the natural, before you can be a successful marathon-runner, there are certain techniques to be picked up and foundation that you must first lay before you can be crown champion. Before loading you with bible principles or practical know-hows, this book first helps you to set the necessary foundation which has already been specifically stated in the bible to build a stable, Spirit-filled Christian life.In particular, there are five main points that really impacted me while I was reading this book:
1. My foundation is Jesus Himself and not a set of values
In chapter 1, the author – Derek Prince, mentioned the importance of knowing the Person of Jesus Christ. For many of us, just like the great apostle Paul, we may never have seen Jesus in the flesh. Yet in 2 Tim 1:12, Paul did not say “I know what I have believed” but instead said “I know whom I have believed”. However, more often than not, our faith is not founded upon a Person whom we can know by direct acquaintance simply because we cannot comprehend in our natural mindset how it is possible to know Christ in a direct, personal way, as if we’ve seen Him in the flesh. And as a result of such a carnal and non-biblical thinking, we never really seek to know the Person of Jesus Christ because we never thought it would be possible. We hence approach the Bible sub-consciously as just a historical record of what had happened and fail to understand internally that the Bible is actually the living Word of God.
The Word is living and its alive because the Word became flesh through Jesus (John 1:14) and Jesus is not a dead Saviour buried in some tomb today. He’s very well alive and Jesus Christ is not a fictional character. He’s as real as we can get! And the faith that is based on the personal experience of Jesus Christ revealed by the Holy Spirit is a kind of confidence that nothing can ever overthrow.
2. The supreme test of my love for God
Keeping God’s Word is the supreme test of my love for Him. It’s as simple as the sentence gets. As Derek Prince mentioned in Chapter 2, “God means as much to you as His Word means to you – just that much, and no more”.
Learning from the parable of the wise and foolish builders in Matthew 7:24-27, I learn that the difference between the success of these two men do not lie in the testing that their houses have to go through but in the doing of the Word. The man who built his house on the rock hears the Word and does what the Word says (v.24) whereas the man who built his house on the sand hears the Word but is not a doer of the Word (v.26). Just like true scriptural repentance is a change in mind, course and direction (explained in Chapter 9) and requires action on the sinner’s part, so is true love for God. It is a confession and a love declaration that have to be backed up by complete obedience to the Word. If not, we become like what Jesus was quoting the prophet Isaiah in Matthew 15:8. “These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
3. Healing is in the Word
As I was reading Chapter 5, it was good reminder to note that God Himself is in His Word and that it is through His Word that He comes into our lives. In Proverbs 4:22 (NIV), it says that God’s Word is “life to those who find them and health to a man’s whole body”. The alternative reading for “health” is the word “medicine”, according to the 1611 edition of the King James Version.
And so, just like any medication prescribed to us by medical doctors, God’s “medicine” comes with directions too. One of the directions highlighted, is the necessity to keep both eyes fixed unwaveringly on the Word. That simply means purely looking at His promises and not have the other eye looking in some other direction for other alternatives. After all, though the power of medical science is limited, the power of God’s Word is unlimited; and as shared in Chapter 10, it is vital to note that your spiritual mind should always accept the testimony of God’s Word as invariably and unchangeably true. Subsequently, the testimony of the senses will then be accepted only insofar as it agrees with the testimony of God’s Word and not the other way around!
On a personal note, it is hard to impart faith in God’s healing if I’ve not experienced first-hand the miraculous healing of God through His Word. Yet, because the Word says “health to all their flesh”, all simply means all. And since God says it, that settles it.
4. The devil’s emphasis
For the longest time, even after I got saved, I’ve always viewed Christianity as a set of dos and don’ts, cans and cannots and there is always such a major emphasis on what I cannot or may not do since I’m a born-again Christian. To walk holy and to live a life of sanctification seems to be the result of not doing the big no-nos and there did not seem to be a positive aspect to sanctification, except knowing at the back of your head that it is what God said in His Word.
Through all these years, I’ve failed to see the two sides of sanctification that God has actually already clearly stated in the Word. As Derek Prince mentioned in Chapter 7, sanctification “consists in being separated from sin and the world and from all that is unclean and impure” but it also consists in being a “partaker of God’s holy nature”. And the end result? It is a positive conforming to the image of Christ Himself; a positive partaking of God’s holiness, that Romans 8:29 talks about and that goes far beyond the “barren, legalistic, negative attitude” of just separating ourselves from sin.
The over-emphasis on the negative aspect of sanctification, without having an accurate and balanced view of the ultimate goal of it has thus caused us Christians – and non-Christians alike – to view God as a legalistic God who is hard to please. And this is exactly the image of God that the devil wants to portray to us – that since God is such a controlling person and it seems so impossible following Him, we might as well just not follow Him altogether. This thinking occurs as our goal is then not to conform to the likeness of Christ but just to follow a set of rules. As such, we fail to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and getting to know God’s will personally for our lives, as mentioned in Romans 12:2 . After all, the revelation of His will is granted only to the renewed mind as the old, carnal, unrenewed mind can never know or understand God’s perfect will.
5. Coming under His provision and protection
Quite often, I find my mind invaded by strange moods of depression or find myself being exposed to all kinds of moral and spiritual temptations which usually come so sudden and unexpected. I didn’t understand why this was happening as I failed to understand that when I enter into another realm of new spiritual blessing, I also can find myself entering into a realm of new spiritual conflict, as highlighted in Chapter 28.
“As a logical consequence, increased power from God will always bring with it increased opposition from Satan”. The desire in my life to have a higher level of spiritual experience also means I’ll have to meet and overcome Satan face-to-face. However, it is important to know that I don’t have to meet him alone; unless I fail to come under the protection and power of the Holy Spirit and fail to use the Word that God has provided me with as my attacking weapon. After all, Satan has no defence against the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Nevertheless, the responsibility to pray for protection and to apply God’s Word still lies with me.
Truly, God has already provided us with everything we need to fight the good fight of faith and to live a life of holiness and fulfilment that not just pleases Him but it’s also our benefit, as children of God. Walking with Christ means more than just believing what you hear the pastor preaches on Sundays. It goes beyond just believing what you read but it’s knowing who you’re walking with experientially – the Person of Jesus Christ Himself – and daily conforming to His likeness.
On 6/23/2008 06:05:00 AM, eunicechan let go.
