Tag Archives: faith

Learning To Be A Son – Chapter Twelve – Complete In Christ

Book Reviews, , , ,

LEARNING TO BE A SON

CHAPTER TWELVE

COMPLETE IN CHRIST

If we are truly the sons and daughters of God, how can we ever attain the high standard Jesus set for us? Take heart! God views us from His perspective as already complete in Christ. God guarantees that what He began, He will finish.

What has He done?

  • He guaranteed the success of the venture because of the power of the cross. It is His will that we be made holy.
  • He cannot fail because of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that He would not only be with us – He would be in us to apply all the effects of the cross in our lives.

Both Paul and Peter confirmed this in their letters. They knew what they were talking about because both of them had started badly but, because of the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, they experienced the transformation that the Holy Spirit brought about in them.

From God’s point of view, the work is complete but we must respond or nothing will change. Our response is to believe Jesus’ words and obey His teaching. This is the way to increasing freedom from the power of sin in our lives and increasing likeness to Jesus, our elder brother.

It is our responsibility to maintain the link, the spiritual “umbilical cord” with God through faith, submission and obedience to Him. As we trust Him, so He works in us to recreate us into the image of our Creator.

Now we must become what we are, sons and daughters of God.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

 

 

Learning To Be A Son – Chapter Five – Slaves or Sons?

Book Reviews, , , ,

CHAPTER FIVE

Slaves or Sons?

Since we have already established that the whole of humankind was intended to be the family of God and that every person is potentially a son or daughter of God, how do we move from potential to actual? The operative word is “faith”. New Testament writers like John and Paul understood what Jesus came to do. He came to reveal the true nature of the Father and to remove the barrier of sin that separated us from Him so that we can be restored to our rightful place as sons and daughters of God.

Jesus calls us to become His disciples, followers of our rabbi so that, in close and intimate association with Him, we can learn to be sons by watching, listening and imitating Him. When we respond to His call, we begin our journey with Him which will take us to the Father if we follow His way, obey His instructions and keep our eyes on our destination.

Sin, the great barrier between man and God, was the outcome of Adam’s disobedience to God’s instruction in the Garden of Eden. Sin destroyed the fellowship Adam and Eve had with God and left them dirty, diseased, deformed and dead – unable to connect with God because their nature had become corrupted. It was because of His great love that He had already formulated His plan to rescue us from the ravages of sin and adopt us once again into His family through the death of His Son.

Through the Holy Spirit, whom He sent on the Day of Pentecost, God confirmed the forgiveness Jesus bought by His death, and restored everyone who believes in Jesus to His family as His sons and daughters. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption. He witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God and, through Him, we can address God as Abba, Father – a term of intimacy and endearment.

Those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God, not those who claim allegiance because they have signed a decision card or answered an altar call. It is because of our status as sons and daughters that we enjoy all the benefits of life in the family of God. This is our “password” to eternal life – not when we die but now, in fellowship with the Father and with the Son in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.

We are still fallible human beings, with an old sinful nature that is vulnerable to temptation. Satan has been defeated but he is still active to deceive us when we listen to his lies. There still lurks in us the thought that we are his slaves under his power and that we are subject to punishment when we sin. We try to gain acceptance with the Father through keeping rules instead of living in the truth that Jesus fully paid our debt and that His cry on the cross, “It is finished!” meant exactly that.

Since we have not fully understood the implications of His death, we feel uncomfortable with God. Like the returning prodigal, we want to be treated as slaves and not fully accepted as sons.  But God has not given us the spirit of slavery which makes us afraid of Him. He has given us the Spirit of adoption. We are truly the sons and daughters of God, forgiven and fully accepted. Our response is to come out from the world and be separated to God. He has promised that He will be a Father to us in the truest sense of the word.

When we respond to Jesus’ invitation to follow Him, we leave our old life behind and begin our journey with Him which will take us to the Father, learning from Him what a true son is like and being transformed into His image as we continue to abandon our old ways of thinking and return to His way.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

To order your 0wn copy of either book, contact

Toll free – 0800 990 914 (South Africa)

orders.africa@partridgepublishing.com

www.partridgepublishing.com/africa  or

+44 20 314 3997 (outside South Africa)

ISBN: Hardcover – 978-1-4828-0891-9                                                                                     Softcover 978-1-4828-0890-2                                                                                                              eBook 978-1-4828-0889-6

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

Future Faith

Bible Study, , , ,

FUTURE FAITH

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect (Heb. 11:39-40).

How would you have liked to have been in the shoes of these who died trusting God but having no idea what their future held for them? They knew nothing of the finished work of their Messiah, which was effective for them as well as for us except that they did not know Him.

They had never seen the face of God in a human being who was God and who came to earth to reveal the Father. They had never seen the Father’s love in action, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind and opening the ears of the deaf, casting our demons and raising the dead. They did not know that God Himself would pay the price He demanded for the debt of sin. They had no idea that He would conquer sin and death, defeat the devil and rise from the tomb, never to die again.

They had no indwelling Holy Spirit, a gift from the Father to be with them forever and to make Jesus real to them in their everyday lives. They had no written word to light their way, to nourish their spirits and to reassure them that God was with them when life was tough and when the enemy of their souls harassed them and tried to lure them back into sin. They had no past with Jesus to secure them to their unknown future.

Like their ancestor Abraham, they had the promises of God to guide them towards their future like a distant light in a very dark cave. To this they clung and faced their tormentors and certain death because, in the depth of their hearts they were sure that death was not the end. Like a shipwrecked man in a vast ocean, they had a single lifejacket that kept them afloat and they refused to let go.

Did they know that they were not alone, that there was an army of people who would join them in their search for the permanent dwelling God had promised to those who remained faithful to Him? What lay ahead for those who refused to trade the temporary pleasures of sin in a short and transient life for an uncertain future?

It was their confidence in the promises of God that secured for them their place in His hall of faith. That alone was enough to gain them a standing in righteousness which no amount of good works would secure. It is trust in God’s word alone that pleases God. Just imagine that! He values our trust in Him far more than anything we can do to try to gain His favour. When we take Him seriously, believe what He says and act in obedience to His instructions, we become fully accepted and reckoned as righteous.

It is on this basis that God releases us from the penalty of our past because Jesus paid our debt and secured the forgiveness of our sin and a place in His family. But, if we don’t believe Him, there is no way that we can ever enjoy the benefits of what He did for us. How tragic that there is a world of people for whom Jesus died but they either don’t know it or they refuse to believe and receive His forgiveness because they think they know better.

We must never be like the philosopher, Bertrand Russell who said, “Forgiveness is a beggar’s refuge. We must pay our debts.” How sad that his pride prevented him from enjoying a place in God’s family which is reserved only for those who believe what He says.

Is belief in God’s forgiveness a form of escapism? It might be if it is based on wishful thinking but it cannot be if it is based on the historical fact of the execution of a righteous man and the indisputable reality of His resurrection. All these who died in faith, choosing to remain loyal to God despite the treatment they received at the hands of people hostile to Him, await the resurrection promised through Jesus. They share in the hope that believers in Jesus carry in their hearts.

We are all in it together.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

The Faith Hall Of Fame

Bible Study, , ,

THE FAITH HALL OF FAME

By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead. By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death, ‘He could not be found because God had taken him away.’ For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him (Heb. 11: 4-6).

Having given his readers a concise definition of faith, the writer proceeded to give them a resume of the great heroes of faith in the history of God’s people. Faith is only true faith when it issues in action that is based on God’s instructions or in a walk of trust in Him. To the Hebrew mind, intellectual assent to information about God that does not issue in a response to Him is pointless. To them there was no such thing as “I believe there is a God,” but continue to live as I like, because my belief is irrelevant unless I recognise that I am accountable to Him.

Abel’s faith that issued in his act of worship by bringing an offering of “the fat portions of the firstborn of his flock” (gen 4: 4) is remarkable given that he did not have the Mosaic Covenant to follow. How did Abel know that the first of the increase of the flocks and herds and the produce of the land belonged to God? Was his love for God so strong that he instinctively worshipped Him with the best? It seems that he was of a different spirit to his brother Cain.

And what of Enoch? He loved and worshipped God in the midst of a corrupt and evil society. He was the sixth generation from Adam. By this time humankind had become so corrupt that God regretted that He had made man. He saved Noah, the only righteous person on earth, and his family, to preserve and rebuild the human race in the hopes that the flood would wipe out the evil so that He could begin again with a righteous man.

We are told that “Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him.” (Gen. 6: 24). What does that mean? It is another way of saying that God removed him from the earth without dying. Wow! And that in the midst of extreme wickedness! Only one other man in the Biblical record left the earth without dying – Elijah, who went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Not even Jesus, the Son of God, escaped death.

Faith and obedience – two intertwined responses to God. Faith that does not take God seriously enough to respond in obedience is not faith – it is foolishness. It is the height of insult to any person to treat him or his words as irrelevant or inconsequential. The greatest compliment any person can pay another is to listen to him and to take him and his word seriously. Only when that person proves that his word is not to be trusted can one dismiss what he says with a pinch of salt.

God takes great pleasure in those who obey Him even if they do not understand the reason for what He requires because they trust Him and know that He knows what He is doing, even if they don’t. The religious leaders crucified Jesus because they refused to take Him seriously even when He produced proof to corroborate His claims.

‘Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.’ Again they tried to seize Him, but He escaped their grasp. (John 10: 37-38).

God has left us in no doubt as to what pleases Him the most. Faith issuing in obedience – God’s pleasure. No faith – no obedience – no pleasure. It’s as simple as that!

After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’ (Acts 13: 22).

God does not only require obedience that issues from trust in Him. He also rewards those who trust Him. No response of faith and obedience goes unnoticed. He rewards those who earnestly seek Him, not always in the way we expect but always according to His will because He sees the bigger picture. This is another thing about trusting God. It’s about trusting Him, not our expectation of Him because He is God and we are not. To trust God is to allow Him to be God in our circumstances because He works according to His plan, not ours.

Trust – obey – please God – reward. This how God works with us.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

 

Two Mighty Statements

Bible Study, , ,

TWO MIGHTY STATEMENTS

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible (Heb. 11:1-3).

Two mighty statements! A superb definition of faith and a magnificent explanation of creation!

The writer referred to faith as the vehicle through which we enter this life in Christ, sustain this life and participate in all the benefits of Jesus’s sacrifice and high priesthood. Faith. What is faith? Two words describe faith in a nutshell – confidence and assurance. Faith reaches out from our hearts into the unseen realm and lays hold of spoken words to pull them into the natural until the unseen becomes visible. The believer puts his confidence in the trustworthiness of the one who spoke the words.

Not every word spoken into the atmosphere has weight. Many, many of the promises spoken by unreliable people vanish into oblivion as soon as they are out of their mouths. What about the empty promises made by politicians to hopeful electorate to gain their vote? Their words have not weight because they cannot fulfil them or because they have no intention of honouring their word.

What about words spoken by parents to children which are never carried out, leaving their offspring disappointed and disillusioned about the trustworthiness of their promises, spawning frustration and rebellion. How can God be trusted when His representatives don’t follow through on a simple promise? But God is reliable. That’s who He is!

Assurance! Confidence gives birth to assurance based on the credibility of the one who has promised. Although the promises of fickle humans do not always offer assurance, we can have absolute assurance that the word of our reliable God cannot be broken. His word is based on His character. He cannot deny Himself. He is God, after all.

“Look at the universe,” urges the writer. “How did it come into being?” God’s word! God spoke and stuff happened. That’s how powerful and trustworthy what God says, is. When He releases a word from His mouth, it has creative power. It can make happen in the visible world what is invisible in the atmosphere. God releases from His mouth what is already inside of Himself and it will translate into what He says because of who He is.

Faith = confidence and assurance. This is our invisible link with God’s promises and His power to do what He has said. It is His chosen way and He cannot act outside of faith. When we fail to trust Him enough to rest in what He has said, His hands are tied. There is no link between the unseen and the seen realm. Faith is the fine gossamer thread that links the temporal with the eternal.

Let’s look at the writer’s illustration. Contrary to the “ex nihilo” – out-of-nothing – explanation of the theologians, the Bible tells us what He did. God spoke into the physical what was already in existence; He made the visible out of what was invisible – atoms, energy – which is within Himself. Out of His own divine energy He formed the universe by the power of His command.

It is by the same power of His command that He brings into the visible world that which already exists in Him – His will. If He could fashion the universe out of the energy that was already within Himself, how simple it is for Him to bring into visibility the promises He has decreed by His word. The fact that His delays are connected to His timing does not negate His faithfulness in fulfilling His promise.

The issue, then, does not lie with God’s reliability but with our response. It is through faith – holding on to the gossamer thread that connects us to Him – and patience, the willingness to wait for His time that will see the promises fulfilled. Faith and hope, confidence and assurance, seeing the end result encapsulated in the promise and being confident that He who promised is faithful – reliable and secure.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublshing.com.