I ask all readers to please pray for Jutta
Please pray for Jutta and send her an email of encouragement let her know you are concerned about her practice the love of Christ, the love for your neighbor toward her.
The study will look at the advice Paul gives to Timothy. It is Godly advice and is therefore good advice for use today as well.
1 Timothy 2: 1-3 Paul exhorts Timothy that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all in authority. We surely see the benefit in that, we need to pray for the President, for Governors and Mayors - God's word states that all power and authority has been given to Christ so we should pray that they recognize that they are under Christ's authority. Most people in authority do not recognize Christ - but God is able to carry out His will, His plan even if the most powerful people on the planet oppose it, look at Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Darius to name a few. Read Psalms 2 also.
1 Timothy 3: 15 Paul speaks about the house of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth. Christianity serves a living God. Jesus died but He lives - Mohammand died and is still dead, Buddha died and is still dead, Kirshna died and is still dead. We serve the only true and living God. The church is the pillar and the ground of the truth. The truth is what the true church is about, not get rich schemes, not providing entertainment, but presenting the truth - the Word of the Living God - the only way you are going to see Jesus Christ in a saving way, is in the Word of God.
1 Timothy 4:1 Paul warns Timothy and the church today, that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrine of devils. If nothing else that should cause everyone to examine a church very carefully before joining it - Is it teaching the Word of God or is it teaching doctrine of devils disguised as the Word of God.
1 Timothy 4:13 Paul tells Timothy to give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. To immerse himself in them. Timothy was a pastor and Paul was telling him that these are some of the things he should be doing in the church, as its pastor. Check out your church, does the pastor exhort you, encourage you with the Word of God, is the Word of God read in your church on Sunday, I dont mean 2 or 3 verses but a time of Scripture reading, is your pastor concerned with sound biblical doctrine - if not, that church may be teaching doctrine of devils.
2 Timothy 1:7 Paul tells Timothy that God has not given us a Spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Now that is good to know. The Spirit that saved you is a Spirit of Power, He has the power to make us like Christ. He wants us to recognize that He is stronger than our sin, He is stronger than your strongest desire and passion - He will lead you to fall in love with Christ and that will become your strongest desire, you will want to be faithful and loyalto the One who has saved you, the Holy Spirit works that in you as you obey. The Spirit will wash and cleanse our mind with the Word of God so that it can become sound.
2 Timothy 2:19 Paul is telling Timothy the Lord knows those who are His, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity - God knows everyone who will be saved. He wants us to be sure that we are in that number and He tells us that we will have a desire to depart from iniquity, and the Spirit in us will cause us to progressively move away from sin. How does God know who are His - well He is God and He knows everything - but you can be sure that those who are His; long to come into His presence in prayer, they long to come into His presence by reading His Word, they fight selfishness, and look to help their neighbors, they cry over their sin, they plead for forgiveness, knowing that it will come, for the Word says so, they walk in the conscious presence of the Lord all the time. They are not waiting to get to heaven to encounter God, they encounter Him daily in prayer and in His Word. They know He is real and alive, because the Spirit has testified to their spirit that the Word of God is true. They know they are not perfect and still have their sin nature in them, but in spite of the good and the bad that may come their way, they have their vision set - thay know that Day will come; within their heart God has put that spiritual motivation, that anchor, that the flesh cant touch, the world cant touch, and devils and demons cant touch, that day when they willl see the Lord face to face and share in His eternal Glory - You must encounter God now - you cant wait until you die - Strive to enter in. Think about it, we will share in that Holy Splendor, the Everlasting Glory of God - we will be able to see Him who created us, Him who has given us eternal life, Him who holds the universe together ( I challenge you to goggle the size of the universe, how small the earth is, how small man is) That makes you want to fight your sin, it makes you want to live for Christ it makes you want to pray, it makes you want to get His Word in you and pray for the strength to alway please Him.
2 Timothy 2:21 Paul tells Timothy that we should strive to be vessels of honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work We should desire to be used of God in any way He chooses.
2 Timothy 2:22 In order to be a vessel of honorable use we need to flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.These are the things that we should be running after, they are things that are not in us, but things that the Holy Spirit can and will work in us, when we give our hearts to the Lord. Paul says a lot about the conscience in both of these letters.
1 Timothy 1:5 the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. A good conscience - Thank God for our conscience - even when we are unsaved our conscience is like the police set up inside of us. When we were children and we were out of the sight of our parents, we were checked sometimes, when we were going to do something bad, by our conscience. Even as we became adults our conscience still warned us - we are good at not listening at times, but pity the person who has seared his conscience. God when He saves us works on cleaning up our conscience and making it good by His Word, even the one who may have seared his conscience. We should always obey when the Word of God checks us.
2 Timothy 4:3 Again Paul warns Timothy about people who will not endure sound teaching -they dont want to hear the Word of God preached to them, they dont want to have the Scripture read to them, Paul says their ears are itching and they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. This was happening during Paul's time and it is happening today. People do not want the gospel, they had no use for it, they want something else, in our culture, entertainment is highly valued, so when we go to church our hearts say we dont want to hear the Word, make me happy, make me laugh, make me have a fun time. When the gospel is rejected, when the Word of God is rejected, when God is rejected what is the outcome?
If you go back in the Old Testament when the people rejected God and wanted something else, God dealt with them in various ways, He rescued thousands of Isralites from Egypt but they tested Him in the wildreness and only 2 from the generation of those who were in Egypt went into the promised land. When the nation was established in the promised land and they rejected God and wanted somthing else; first the Northern Kingdom was destroyed and exiled to Assyria and than the Southern Kingdom was destroyed and exiled into Babylon. During the times of the Judges when the people rejected God and wanted something else, the people who lived around them overcame them and enslaved them. The Bible is Clear that in all these cases God did it.
This is 2012 everything that was recorded in the Bible is for our instruction, we have examples to look at, thats why it is so important that the whole Word of God is preached and taught. Sodom and Gomorrah are examples for us to see.
What is the conclusion ? God is a jealous God, and sometimes we may be taken aback by the way that God disciplines, but we must always remember, we are finite, we dont know everything, God is infinite and He knows everything. We should be able to tell from reading His Word that God is altogether different than we are. The most ridiculous sight in the universe is an arrogant small human who refuses to acknowledge God, when he sees arounf him the wonder of nature. God is the most amazing being in existence, and we can only know Him in part now, we can only get a fraction of the Wonder, the Absolute Radiance of His being, we run out of words to describe Him because He is undescribable. We can only know how He is through His Word. He is a Spirit, and it is our duty to worship Him, the best that we can be is in humble adoration of Him, the highest level of our existence is being under the shelter of His wing, of having His glory cover us, having His favor mercifully extended toward us. The Holy God of the Bible should be angry when we sin, and He is, He should be angry when we desire something else, especially when we call ourselves His children, there is nothing better than Him, He knows that there is nothing better than Himself, and if we by His mercy and grace spend time with Him In prayer and in His Word, it will slowly dawn on us, like a light shining in a dark place, and we will know that there is nothing better than Him.
By His unimaginable Mercy and Grace -
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