Fall on Love before falling in love

Here is the outline of my talk at High Praise Sta. Rosa. We set out to understand love in its fullness at the post-valentine event of their youth fellowship. By searching through the Scriptures, we realized that love can only be understood fully when we know God, who is its author, and when we understand His Agape love expressed in Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.

May you be blessed as you read this post!

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How to Understand the Bible Correctly (3)

©CreationSwap/Aaron Dailey

In my previous post, we looked at the importance of understanding words, phrases and terms as the early believers understood them. This guards us from wrongly applying our modern eyes without considering the original hearer's worldview. Theologians call this "eisigesis" or reading into the Scripture.

Instead of letting God's Word speak for itself (exegesis), we put words into God's Word because of our preconceived biases as modern readers.

In this post, we're going to deal with the "literal" interpretation and its supremacy over the symbolical. We will also consider, however, when not to use the literal and the instances when both are acceptable in understanding the Bible.

May you be blessed as you read this post!

How to Understand the Bible Correctly (2)

©CreationSwap/Jessica Preskitt

In my previous post, we looked at what it meant to interpret Biblical passages in context. This is especially crucial owing to the fact that the Bible was not written in a vacuum. Instead, one must consider both literary and cultural contexts to fully understand its message.

In this post, we're going to see the importance of understanding Biblical words, phrases and terms as the early believers understood them. We may be tempted to "read into" the Scripture with our modern eyes. Doing so, however, opens us to the possibility of twisting God's Word to fit what we understand.

By God's grace and with the leading of the Holy Spirit, may we develop the habit of "reading from" the Scriptures lending our thoughts captive before God's.

How to Understand the Bible Correctly (1)

©CreationSwap/Robert Hafley

Reading, understanding and interpreting the Bible are among the most useful skills a Christian must strive to develop. I believe much of the disagreements in Biblical interpretation lie in the method employed by the Bible students. They simply aren't applying the same principles in reading and understanding God's Word.

In the context where I minister, I've noticed the need to guide younger believers as well as student leaders in this area of their faith. It is true that the revelations from the Bible come to us ultimately through the Holy Spirit. However, it is not true that we must divest our cognitive skills and rely solely on the supernatural in handling the Scriptures. There must be a balance of both. After all, the Bible came to us not as a magical artifact but as a book that can be read and understood through language and literature, with the leading of the Spirit.

In this series of blog posts, I'm going to share several materials that can help every believer in the area of Biblical interpretation. These materials are based on the book of Pastor Willie Girao, How to Understand the Bible Correctly.

You can download and personalize the article here.

Jesus of History, God of Eternity

Did Jesus really exist in history? Do we have other sources showing that He walked on earth and interacted with people? And ultimately, can we prove from Scripture and extra-Biblical documents that He is indeed who He claims to be-- God in human flesh?

You can personalize this material as I did and use it also in your own Bible Studies. Download the documents in Word format here.

Is He Master or Lord?

This is the first of a series taken from the book, "Jesus: One of Us." Taking the cue from Jesus Himself, we deal with the questions, "Who is a real disciple?" and "What does it mean to disciple?"

You can personalize this material as I did and use it also in your own Bible Studies. Download the documents in Word format here.

The Offended One: God (and His character)

Writer's Note:This is the outline manuscript of my message to the Centennial Christian Movement on Aug 30, 2011.

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  I. An Indictment to the modern Christian Church

-we have turned God into a fairy, a talisman, a genie whose worth is in His fulfillment of our desires

Who is God to you?

-We have three rough classifications of who God is today

1. The high and mighty, disinterested and self-centered God who made the universe out of His whim but left it on its own

2. The submissive God who is swayed by His creations’ whims and desires, who exists to give His creations the best of everything they ever dreamed of; He is their genie in short

3. The sovereign and all-powerful Maker and Sustainer of the universe but who exercises concern and love for His creations according to His own will

-take your pick, who is God to you?

The Collegian Article

-whether we agree with this or not, I believe the second description of “god” is the most prevalent in our time and our campus

-there is an article from the Philippine Collegian that summarizes this for us—written by “Naomi Marcos” and entitled “Confession of a believer”

-In the article she wrote:

“In most Christian orgs, believers are encouraged to focus on their personal relationship with God. God is considered a personal god, and members are conditioned to think of God in their own convenient ways: as a father, a friend, a teacher, or whatever they need. God becomes everybody’s own run-to guy...”

-In a word, she is saying that Christian organizations today, “condition” their members to think of God as a genie who gives them all they wish provided that they have enough faith, or as a coca-cola machine we put in our coins of faith and out comes our desired outcome

-interestingly, Naomi follows this up with these words, and I believe she is correct:

“This concept (of God being everybody’s own run-to guy) disturbed me, for I always thought that if God did exist, He existed for a purpose beyond taking care of me, or any other person in the world. What was the point of being omnipotent and omniscient if God was only here to console me when my grades dropped? God can manage my personal life anytime He wants, but confining Him to my own personal conflicts was belittling His power and existence.”

-even if Naomi expressed doubt in her faith, she recognized that God is someone greater and bigger than what her former Christian org wanted her to make of Him

Is this how you see God as well? Or is this how you conceive of God? Think again.

We have this ministry (2 Cor 4:1-7)

I. Opening Story

-STAND-UP incident when I was in my sophomore years

-Question: What is your main purpose for existence? What are you fighting for?

-Answer: we believe in the Biblical diagnosis of humanity’s problem—Sin

               : what you labor against—poverty, corruption, injustice etc.—are but byproducts of sin

 : we labor for the root cause, because as the Bible emphatically declared, unless God gives us a heart of flesh in exchange for our wicked hearts of stone, there can be no genuine transformation

: Humanity’s Sinful Nature is the problem

: we labor earnestly to resolve this issue through the Message of the Gospel

·      Jesus came as a man, sinless (John 1:14, Hebrews 4:15)

·      Jesus took upon Himself the sins of humanity past, present and future (1 Pt 3:18)

·      Jesus’ death on the cross paid for the penalty of the world’s sins (Mark 10:45)

·      He is the perfect Lamb sacrifice that we may be freed of sin and its penalty—eternal spiritual death in hell (John 1:29)

·      We can partake of this gift of reconciliation, forgiveness and eternal life the moment we put our faith in Jesus, commit our lives to Him as our personal Savior and Lord, and from a life of sin, surrendering our all at His cross through repentance (Eph 2: 8-10  Mark 1:15).

·      We are able to do this only by the sheer grace of God

: when we commit our lives to Jesus:

- He promised to make us God’s sons and daughters, co-heirs of the kingdom

-He gives us eternal life, we shall never perish

-we now belong to His Kingdom for eternity

: notice that this Gospel never promises health, wealth or prosperity in this world but promises spiritual health, wealth and prosperity—because this is undoubtedly the key issue

-Ate Tine’s reaction: I’m not sure if she understood me completely

:my joy is in the fact that a seed is planted in her heart and I pray that God will make it grow

: she now works with Bayan Muna in Congress

: this is our ministry, one of our main purposes as Christians, the message that we go out and proclaim everyday to everyone

:Summary in 2 Corinthians 5:20—“We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

II. Context of the Passage

-our ministry and purpose for being align with Paul’s own understanding of his ministry

-our reasons are his reasons that is why he wrote Chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians

-Paul and all believer have a ministry—the ministry of the New Covenant (2 Corinthians 3:6)

The New Covenant

“He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3:6)

-this ministry is of the Spirit (v.6)

-this ministry brings life (v.6)

-this ministry is glorious (v.8)

-this ministry brings righteousness (v.9)

-this ministry of the Spirit lasts (v.11)

How did such view of the Christian ministry affect Paul?

-such view of ministry gave him hope

-this hope made them bold in proclaiming the message of Christ

-Dear friends, may we also view our ministry in the same way. It is not ours but the Spirit’s, it brings life and righteousness, is glorious and it lasts.

-I believe, a great majority of Christians fail to shine ever brightly for the Lord because one way or another they do not believe that their ministry is such

-Woe for those people! Woe even for us! If we call ourselves followers of Christ but doubt the very heart of our message, we have a compelling reason to go back to the Cross and wrestle with God.

- Struggle with Him until He shows you what it means to be His disciple

-When you get struck by a truck in KNL, your life will change forever. Now imagine if you get struck by God! Your life has to change! Every aspect of it. Because it is impossible not to be moved when the Living God Himself begins His work in your life.

-Unless this is true to you, you will find that the ministry of reconciling the World to God is impossible, because you yourself may not yet be reconciled with the Lord in the first place.