-
Service: Continuing the Work of Christ in the World
Now that we’re about halfway through our Workout Program, let’s pause briefly to review the progress we have made thus far. We started out this regimen with four exercises in Salvation—exercises through which we learned that… Salvation is obtained through the one-time spiritual event known as the New Birth; an act taking us from sin-enslaved and hell-bound sinners to forgiven and heaven-bound sons and daughters of God; While everyone has been Predestined, or pre-designed, by God to become one of His children, only those who elect to receive His offer of Salvation will do so; and, Once that decision is made and our spiritual adoption is finalized, our Salvation is forever…
-
Sanctification: Restoring the Soul through Worship
So far, through our exercises in Sanctification, we have learned that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to restore our emotions through Prayer and our minds through the study and application of the Word of God—a ministry bringing our hearts into alignment with that of the Father and transforming our minds into ones more like Christ’s. But this only encompasses the restoration of two of the components of our souls—leaving the third one, our all-important and powerful wills, for the Spirit to deal with. And deal with them, He must; because unlike our emotions which are simply expressions of how we feel, and our minds which merely reveal…
-
Sanctification: The Work of the Holy Spirit
As promised in our introduction to Sanctification, this workout time will be given over to becoming better acquainted with the Holy Spirit, our Trainer and Coach for this entire series of exercises. The way in which we will do this is by asking and answering the following questions… His Person—Who is He? His Position—What does He do? His Power—How does He do it? and, His Presence—How does He relate this to each one of us? His Person: Who is He? Although some may have mistakenly thought of the Holy Spirit as nothing more than an emanation of God’s power, or some impersonal spiritual force from God, in reality, He is a Person—the equal, yet distinctive third…
-
Blessing, Cursing, and Big Time Rebellion
Now that all nine Vignettes, or mini stories, in Act 1, Scene 1 of God’s One Big Story have been presented, you might be thinking that the time has come for us to leave Stage #1 and press on to Stage #2, where the second scene in our production is waiting to get underway. However, before we can move on from here, there is still the matter of our critical analysis of Vignette #9, which has yet to be completed. Given that this particular Vignette was packed with a lot more action than most of the previous ones, there will be a considerable amount of material for us to discuss;…
-
A New World, An Old Nature
In our recent critique of Vignette #8 in Act 1, Scene 1 of God’s One Big Story, we talked at length about the many changes thought to have been brought about by the Flood which occurred in Noah’s day. The ones we discussed were… The change in climate; The change in the landscape; The change in man’s diet; The change in the way society was to be governed; The change in the configuration of the continents; and, The beginnings of the formation of fossils and fossil fuels. With so many innovations having taken place in such a relatively short space of time, I think that it is safe to say that when Noah and…
