A good word.

Especially the purpose of their guilty conscience, is to draw them to, rather than drive them away from, their Lord and Savior.

I'm currently listening to Phil Johnson's series on the Ten Commandments from the Grace Life Pulpit. It's hard not to listen and then think "Oh, I've got to stop doing that, and start doing this and such".

Instead, should my response be to moan over my wretched condition instead of trying to smooth out the wrinkles? I have "first-born" syndrome and as such I try to take the lead and sdo it myself (humility is a naturally absent characteristic).

What should my reaction be to such convicting messages?

 

I like the way you did that.
Great things to think on.

 

Marcia~ the Holy Spirit convicts us of both righteousness (what we ought to do) and sin (what we ought not to do). The Spirit uses the word of God to instruct us in what righteousness and sin look like, then this truth is used to convict us one way or the other in what we ought to do. The more familiar we are with God's word, the more precise our understanding of what we ought to do in a given situation ought to be. When I am convicted to do a thing, and it does not contradict, but is in harmony with what I know God's word says, I do it as soon as I am convicted. If I am convicted that a thing I am doing (or about to do) is not righteous I immediately flee doing from it. my obedience is not to God's word, but to God's Spirit. God's word instructs my obedience, but it is to His Spirit that I obey. He in turn will sanctify me as I obey His leading in these things.

It is so terribly simple that some people miss it - they instead hear the instruction from the word, and set about trying to obey "it" instead of God because they don't know any different. The trouble is, when we train ourselves to obey commandments, we fall into the same trap the Jews did - we start to work "works" of righteousness - we equate our "doing" with righteousness instead of our obedience - or we confuse "doing" for obedience.

I believe the way it works is thus: we in the New Covenant are commanded to follow the Holy Spirit's leading, to be instant in our obedience - and our sanctification is tied, not to how many good works we do, or how closely our lives mirror the commandments of scripture, but rather it is tied to our walk with the Lord, our contriteness. We draw near to God, not by doing, but by obeying the Spirit.

You see, you can't "trust" a command, you must trust a person. When you obey the Spirit you are trusting God - trusting that by being instant in your obedience you will be drawn closer to God, not because of how that obedience plays itself out in what you do, or even how well you do it, but rather that in deciding to obey because you trust God is at work in you, and that obeying in that moment is the best thing for you - in that trust you are drawn to God. We seek for God with our whole heart, mind, and life.

When we hear a sermon that tells us all the things we will be doing when we start to obey God's Spirit - sometimes all we hear is a list of things that we should be doing and (because we want to be pleasing to God) we want to get to doing them as soon as we can. The problem is that we are not looking to God personally, but rather to the things we would be doing in order to produce the relationship we hunger for. The truth is, the relationship is already there - all we have to do is start trusting in it rather than trying to produce it.

I don't want to get to convoluted - let me know if that much makes sense.

Rose~ it is easy to do - use a span tag to color the text, and give the span tag a title (title="put verse in here") and when the mouse hovers over the text it shows the words. I have done it before, but I wondered if anyone was getting it.

 

Daniel,
Indeed it does, I just wanted to be sure that I was responding to the right desires.

 

we have never been sanctified by the way we live, rather we are sanctified by the way we die.

Now *that's* powerful!

 

Good stuff. Thanks.

I love to read how our Savior dealt with Peter.

He went fishing with him.

Peter ended up falling on his knees before the Lord depising himself.
Jesus says to him, "Fear not; from now on you shall catch men."

Jesus tells Peter that he is now a friend, and that the greatest of all loves is to lay down your life for a friend.

He says you can't do a thing without Me, and you didn't choose Me, but I chose you.

He calls Peter a man being under Satan's control, and rebukes him.

He tells Peter he will deny Him, and yet be converted.

The Lord asks Peter if He loves Him. And says then go feed My sheep.

Doesn't the Lord do the same in our lives? I think He does.