|
|
Is what your living for...worth what HE died for?
Judgment Seat of Christ
When I stand at the judgment seat of Christ
And He shows me His plan for me;
The plan of my life as it might have been
Had He had His way, and I see.
How I blocked Him here and I checked Him there
And I would not yield my will,
Shall I see grief in my Savior’s eyes;
Grief though He loves me still?
Oh, He’d have me rich, and I stand there poor,
Stripped of all but His grace,
While my memory runs like a hunted thing
Down the paths I can’t retrace.
Then my desolate heart will well-nigh break
With tears that I cannot shed.
I’ll cover my face with my empty hands
And bow my uncrowned head.
No. Lord of the years that are left to me
I yield them to Thy hand.
Take me, make me, mold me
To the pattern Thou hast planned. | | |
|
I haven’t written a lesson in a while. I have been praying for a while to see what God wanted to be spoken. I have a collection of sermons by famous speakers like Louie Gilglio, John Piper, Dave Busby, and others. I was just challenged by one of Dave Busby’s sermons entitled “Facing and Embracing Our Depravity.” I believe it was a direct command that I share with you what Dave said.
Depravity is listed in the American Heritage Dictionary as: Moral corruption, a wicked or perverse act. Essentially, Depravity means sin. So when the title of this lesson is “Embracing Sin” you might wonder what in the world I am talking about. But I think that we need to search deeper than the dictionary’s definition of Depravity. The Bible has two references that have a form of the word Depravity. In Romans 1:28 it says, “…and God gave them over to a depraved mind.” Also in 2nd Timothy 3:8, “…so these men also opposed the truth, men of depraved mind.” So according to these 2 verses, man has a depraved mind or a sinful mind. Where did this depraved mind come from? We all know about Genesis 3 and the fall of man, and that after Adam and Eve sinned; man was helpless, fallen, and could never be righteous again until Jesus died for us…we all know the story from Sunday School. We even use a verse that talks about depravity; Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” In my last lesson to you, we discussed God’s glory and how we can’t even imagine how holy God is. Why can we not imagine how holy God is? Because we have a depraved mind, our mind is fallen. God is so holy, and we are so unholy. He is perfect, and we are a depraved, sinful race.
We are a sinful creature, and because of this we hide. “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Adam and Eve realized they had messed up, so what did they do, they hid. We hide our sinfulness in church. When God comes to commune with us, we hide. We aren’t worthy of His presence, so we hide ourselves. But is that what God wants?
Being depraved doesn’t necessarily have to cause us to hide from God. Until we reach heaven, we cannot become a perfect, holy person. So should we fear entering God’s presence because we are fallen? NO!!
We were once lost in sin, but God in all of His faithfulness saved us! He saved us! He said “I will remember your sins no more.” What I am trying to say is that we can worship God more fully if we accept the fact that we are fallen, sinful, wretched, and depraved. Why? Because He is Holy, Just, Righteous, Omniscient, and Perfect; but He still loves us fallen, sinful, wretched, and depraved people. We can worship God because we are so sinful and He is so holy! I am not saying that you can sin all you want; I’m not saying you should sin at all. I am merely pointing out the fact that God can be worshiped more fully if we accept that we not perfect, and He is.
| | |
| This is a poem written by an anonymous writter around 1620-30. The "sovereign lord" the englishman is talking about is James 1
Yet if his majesty, our sovereign lord,
Sould of his own accord
Friendly himself invite,
And say, "I'll be your guest tomorrow night,"
How should we stir ourselves, call and command
All hands to work! "Let no man idle stand.
Set me fine Spanish tables in the hall
See they be fitted all;
Let there be room to eat,
And order taken that there want* to meat. * lack
See every sconce* and clandlestick made bright, *type of candle
That without tapers* they may give a light. *candles
Look to the presence*; are the carpets spread, *throne area
The dais* o'er the head, *canopy
The cushions in the chair,
And all the candles lighted on the stair?
Perfume the chambers, and in any case
Let each man give attendace in his place.
Thus if the king were coming would we do,
And 'twere good reason too;
For 'tis a duteous thing
To show all honor to an earthly king
And, after all our tavail and our cost
So he be pleased, to think no labor lost.
But at the coming of the King of Heaven
All's set at six and seven*: *six and seven = confused
We wallow in our sin
Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn.
We entertain Him always like a stranger,
And, as at first, still* lodge Him in the manger. *continually | | |
| A survey was taken in 2003 by Campus Crusade for Christ to discover how well American Christian teens know the Bible. In the survey, 84% couldn't do basic evangelism and 93% couldn't highlight major event in the old and new Testament. Pathetic is a word that describes my view of those who were apart of the 84% and 93%. How can you represent Christ, evangelize, and worship God fully if you don't even know HIM!! WE MUST LEARN THESE THINGS!!! The Greeville mission is coming up...we need to be ready to "share the hope that is within you" so to give glory to God's name!! Let's get off the couch and study the Bible!!! You might say, "I don't have enough time", isn't God worthy enough for us to stop watching TV for 15 minutes and spend time with HIM. Stop the Apathy...Stop the Naivety...Spend time with HIM!!! | | |
|
by John Fischer
I have been reacquainting myself lately with the writings of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) and reminded again of the amazing life of this mathematician, physicist, philosopher and religious thinker. In thirty-nine short years (nine, while suffering with an illness that finally claimed his earthly existence) he created mathematical theorems that are still in use today, discovered and researched the properties of a vacuum, dialogued with the greatest scientists of Europe, and wrote volumes of discourse on the meaning of life and the existence of God that is still considered to contain, in its mastery of reason and rhetoric, the finest French prose in history. I doubt there is a literary or law degree in the western world that does not include, as its foundational study, the writings and argumentative skills of Pascal.
And here is what you find out in all that body of work: that his mind was on fire with the light of Christ. With all of his genius intellect, it was a direct encounter with the risen Christ that filled up the emptiness in his own soul. Pascal’s most amazing discovery was that you cannot know God through intellect alone. You know Him through the heart and that comes through experiencing Him directly in a spiritual way. "The heart has its reasons, that reason knows not of."
On the night of November 23, 1654, while reading the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John, Pascal had an encounter with God that instantly filled the emptiness in his heart. It was a life-changing experience he would memorialize on a parchment that he had sewn into the lining of his coat until his death, eight years later. On that parchment, he wrote:
From about half past ten at night to about half an hour after midnight,
FIRE
"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob," not of philosophers and scholars
Certitude, heartfelt joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
The world forgotten, everything except God.
"O righteous Father, the world has not known You, but I have known You"
(John 17:25).
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
In a moment of his greatest illumination, Pascal wrote what a child could have written. From that moment, he went on to write: "Reason Can Begin Again by Recognizing What It Can Never Know," and "The Transition from Human Knowledge to Knowing God." Both of these titles indicate that it is not sufficient to know about God or even argue His existence (which Pascal could do better than anybody); it was ultimately necessary to meet God and come to know Him personally.
350 years ago, one of the greatest minds in human history trembled in the presence of God and cried tears of joy over his salvation, and now, scholars, scientists and lawyers have to read about it, because he wrote it so well. I don’t know about you, but that kind of stuff sets my mind on fire!
| | |
|
