Day 1 Jesus and the Word

I have been blown away by what I have been learning and being reminded of today. I spent a good chunk of time this morning just worshiping God and praying for people in my church. God gave me a song to sing today called Always Forever and it just captured what I want to be true in my life, that Jesus Christ would be the ultimate love of my life and reason to be or not to be. I will post the lyrics at the bottom of the post, I was particularly listening to the Phil Wickham version. I was reading out of Mark today and it was challenging to read about what Jesus said who his true mother sisters and brothers were, those who do God's will. It lead me to re-listen to an audio message from Chip Ingram from his series on Romans 12. This was the fourth one I have listened to recently and it was on relating to the body of believers. It was very convicting and encouraging. One of the biggest take away messages for me was that the way we love one another is the strongest, most effective evangelical action for winning or losing people for Christ. I know it is true because when I have spoken with people with problems with the church or with God one of the root issues they always bring up is how they or someone they knew was treated by Christians. People all want to belong and be loved genuinely without hypocrisy or masks or pretension. His point in going through verses 9-13 is that we need to allow our real selves to meet person's real needs for the right reasons in God's way if we are going to experience the community that Jesus prayed that we would have in the garden when he had that final time with the lord before going to calvary.

Jn 17:20-26
"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

As the very final words God spoke in his last prayer to God it must have been a big deal in God's heart for us to be in community with one another. Help me God to not be lazy, but to do the good I know I ought to in order to minister to others in sincerity and the spirit's leading so that the world would know that God sent Jesus and has loved them as he loved Jesus. Jesus also gave this command to his disciples,

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:34-35

I pray that I can be trained in this time to love like Jesus and experience the love the Father shares with Jesus, so that others can be loved and have their lives opened to the love they were made to experience.

Later that afternoon I was reminded of the song City on a Hill by Casting Crowns on their newest album. It speaks of a people on the city on the hill that fall apart because they allow their differences to drive them apart and into disarray, but they change and begin to use their gifts to encourage and strengthen each others weaknesses so that they work together in harmony. It reminds me of how we need authentic community in the body of Christ and that we each need to know our gifts and use them to help others as 1 Peter 4 tells us to faithfully administer God's grace in its various forms.

Today I also went through Genesis 1-5 to start doing a Bible Outline to help me develop a more overall understanding of the word. I did have some interesting observations reading through it this time though. One was that I noticed that God placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in roughly the same place; the middle of the garden. Also it never said anything about the serpent being in the tree when they were tempted, but even come if he was it is not apparent that they were hanging around the bad news tree, they may have been hanging out by the tree of life and the serpent may have to them right there. It goes to show that the great deceiver does not need us to be near a temptation to tempt us, our minds can entertain thoughts plenty long enough until we do the real thing. I know God was in control the entire time and while the serpent probably thought he was so crafty why do think the two trees of life and death were right next to each other? God knew what he was doing.
I was also doing some more in depth topical study on the book of Hebrews and it never specifies who writes the book and all the OT scriptures are accredited to the holy spirit rather than "the prophet Isaiah said...". Another interesting thing is that the word Hebrew means to pass-over and in the terms of the day it would have meant river crosser, which is what those people did quite a bit of. Most still have yet to cross their most important river of all which is that from the covenant of the old into the new covenant which is the fullest fulfillment and maturity of their old covenant. God wants to bring them from the outer courts into the Inner Chambers where he dwells so that he can dwell in them.

I also did a quick calculation to find that 1,656 years passed from when Adam was made to the flood on the earth. Maybe I can try to trace out the genealogies and trace the elapsed time up until Jesus.

Now I hope to finish off the biography on Derek Prince by Stephen Mansfield and look for a new church to try out in the morning.