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Service: The Church as the Body of Christ
In our previous exercise, we began a new level of workout routines dealing with Service; and during the course of that introductory routine, we learned how, through our service for Christ, the good works which He began are still being done in the world today. Then, as we searched for a definition of the word, especially as it relates to us as believers, we discovered some of the Terms of Service which must be adhered to if any enduring work for Christ is to be accomplished. These are… Service must begin at the altar of worship, where we surrender our wills to God’s will; Service must be motivated by our love for…
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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…
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Beginning Again
When our last Vignette ended—that one being, Vignette #8 of Act 1, Scene 1 of God’s One Big Story—it did so on a very high note. That’s because Noah, his family, and his animal passengers had all emerged safely from the confines of the Ark, the vessel where they had been sequestered for the preceding 370 days, while the rest of the world perished in the Flood. What made this event all the more memorable was the fact that as soon as these weary ocean-goers were on dry land again, the first thing they did in beginning again was to offer a sacrifice of worship and thanksgiving to God. And, it…
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Sowing, Reaping, and the Nature of the Trees
Previously, in Vignette #3, we watched sadly and helplessly as Adam and Eve deliberately chose to disobey God by eating from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This one errant action on their part was all that it took to introduce Evil, with its accompanying fear, shame, deceit, alienation, and death, into what was then an ideal world. Later, in Vignette #4, we saw how, after the passage of time and with the addition of their sons, Cain and Abel, the sowing of that initial seed of Evil by our first parents had taken root and blossomed into the kind of bitterness, resentment, misunderstanding, self-righteousness, and anger…
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All the World’s a Stage–and Life its Cosmic Drama
Having just gone over the presentation of the Bible as a story, the program guide for that story, and the process by which that story will be presented to us—and, since we are rapidly approaching the first stage of the fourteen upon which our story will be presented—let’s use the few minutes we have before we arrive there to try and solidify in our minds the overall concept behind the production that we are about to witness. The best way I know to do that is to draw upon what may seem like a rather unusual resource for instruction in Bible study, and that is the works of William Shakespeare. It…
