At Regeneration last night, we went through Session 16 of Quieting a Noisy Soul. When Jim Berg described this lesson as one of the most important lessons he had ever learned in his spiritual life, it caught my attention. And as he started speaking, I realised that this message was something that I really needed to hear.
The message was titled Qualifying for Divine Help and it was based on Hebrews 12:15-16 and 1 Peter 5:5b. JB defined Grace as 'divine enablement' or 'help from God' and explained that God gives us grace to resist temptation and rejoice and endure times of trouble. When we don't have grace from God consequences include bitterness, moral failure and temporal values. And to get grace, we need to humble ourselves and ask God who gives grace abundantly.
It was a really good message but there were a few points that I thought were worth sharing...
>> When we feel as though we don't want to do anything for God or that we can't - we are in need of Divine enablement. God wants us to do His will and He will give us all the grace we need to do His will.
>> There are two doors - God's will and Satan's will. If we don't go through the God's Will door, we will go through the Satan's Will door by default. It requires effort to go follow God's Will - but God will give us divine enablement (grace) to follow His will, because ultimately he wants us to obey Him. Likewise, if we go through the Satan's Will door, Satan will also give us help (un-grace, hell-p, anti-grace - whatever you want to call it) to keep following our flesh and going deeper into disobedience.
>> When we are going through trials, God doesn't remove them, He just 'turns up' the grace. As we ask Him for more grace to overcome the trial, He will in turn, overcome us with His grace - so much so that we may often find ourselves surprised at our own actions because we never thought we were capable of doing what we did (and rightly so, because we could have only done what we did because God gave us the grace to do it). Confused yet? hehe
>> If we have the wrong value system, we can be easily ripped off. If we value temporal things more than eternal things, we will make bad decisions. We will swap our dimes (10c coins) of integrity and purity, for nickels (5c coins) of pleasure. Satan has confused us by 'swapping the price tags' of things - giving temporal things more value than they are worth.
>> To get grace, we need to come to God with a humble heart. He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. We need to ask God for help to do what He wants us to do.
JB's conclusion?
Believers who are humbling themselves before God and others will be filled with the grace of God and will experience the desire and the power to do what is right. They will be filled with joy and peace, not discontent, anxiety, anger and despair.
The message was titled Qualifying for Divine Help and it was based on Hebrews 12:15-16 and 1 Peter 5:5b. JB defined Grace as 'divine enablement' or 'help from God' and explained that God gives us grace to resist temptation and rejoice and endure times of trouble. When we don't have grace from God consequences include bitterness, moral failure and temporal values. And to get grace, we need to humble ourselves and ask God who gives grace abundantly.
It was a really good message but there were a few points that I thought were worth sharing...
>> When we feel as though we don't want to do anything for God or that we can't - we are in need of Divine enablement. God wants us to do His will and He will give us all the grace we need to do His will.
>> There are two doors - God's will and Satan's will. If we don't go through the God's Will door, we will go through the Satan's Will door by default. It requires effort to go follow God's Will - but God will give us divine enablement (grace) to follow His will, because ultimately he wants us to obey Him. Likewise, if we go through the Satan's Will door, Satan will also give us help (un-grace, hell-p, anti-grace - whatever you want to call it) to keep following our flesh and going deeper into disobedience.
>> When we are going through trials, God doesn't remove them, He just 'turns up' the grace. As we ask Him for more grace to overcome the trial, He will in turn, overcome us with His grace - so much so that we may often find ourselves surprised at our own actions because we never thought we were capable of doing what we did (and rightly so, because we could have only done what we did because God gave us the grace to do it). Confused yet? hehe
>> If we have the wrong value system, we can be easily ripped off. If we value temporal things more than eternal things, we will make bad decisions. We will swap our dimes (10c coins) of integrity and purity, for nickels (5c coins) of pleasure. Satan has confused us by 'swapping the price tags' of things - giving temporal things more value than they are worth.
>> To get grace, we need to come to God with a humble heart. He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. We need to ask God for help to do what He wants us to do.
JB's conclusion?
Believers who are humbling themselves before God and others will be filled with the grace of God and will experience the desire and the power to do what is right. They will be filled with joy and peace, not discontent, anxiety, anger and despair.
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