G.A.M.E.

Pray that the church is the first to become bipartisan. Pray that we are the first to say that love is here and love is coming. We need to be those who are the lobbyist of love teaching old creation that she is broken and new creation is here. Hope has become a very popular word for one political candidate. It is perhaps a great move for it embodies the very essence that brings life to every person. Hope is how each one of us can get out of bed in the morning. It is the essence that causes a single mother to press on at her two full-time jobs. Each one of us must have hope to carry on in life. But if we are to have hope in any entity may the church show the history of hope and its destination. Hope begins with the church saying that America is a golden calf and her promises are broken. And Hope’s destination is with those who follow God displaying that Hope is risen and breathing.

Shade

Definition of Pride: “an unreasonable conceit of superiority,” or and “overweening opinion of one’s own qualities.” Oxford English Dictionary.
Synonyms: egotism, arrogance, hubris, selfishness, vanity, haughtiness, presumption, boastfulness, bigheadedness, self-satisfaction, self-centeredness.
It does not mean self-respect; it means “selfdom.”
CS Lewis in Mere Christianity, “The Great Sin”
• Nature of pride is its competitiveness. I.e. rich vs. richer than…
• It has as it’s goal to be at least equal if not better than someone else.
• It wants to look down on others, not up.
• It put enmity, or strife between men and God. If you are proud, you cannot know God.
• Pride’s most terrible form is in religion itself (Job, Luke 8). It’s when religious life make us feel better then someone else.
• It smuggles it way into religious life. It is from Hell.
• Humility strips us from what makes us unhappy.

Philippians 2:
5Have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross

Have this mind among yourselves…! What does that look like? I would like to see a church really spend time fleshing out the implications of this. Of course they already did, and its recorded in the book of Acts, but in our day the narcissistic culture is blinding Christians from seeing the clear and simple things the Bible presents as being key to the Christian walk.

 Visualize:
1.Chasm to the right: way of moral bankruptcy through human striving for righteousness- heresy of moralism.
2.Chasm to the left: moral bankruptcy through the absence of human striving- heresy of antinomianism.
3.“A ridge”…a path…through the disciplines of spiritual life- leads to inner transformation.
We must remember the “path” does not “produce” the change; it is only the path where the change can occur….the path of “disciplined grace”.

"I go through life as a transient on his way to eternity, made in the image of God, but with the image debased, needing to be taught how to meditate, to worship, to think."
Donald Coggan

How did God in Christ forgive us? With a self-sacrificing, undeserved, covenant love. Using Thomas Watson’s forgiveness definition of:

1. resisting revenge,
2. not returning evil for evil,
3. wishing them well,
4. grieving at their calamities,
5. praying for their welfare,
6. seeking reconciliation so far as it depends on you,
7. and coming to their aid in distress.

John Piper says “This week I’m asking, how can we do that? What gives us the freedom and the ability and the incentive and the power to forgive those who sin against us? Some of you have been wronged so deeply and hurt so badly that forgiving would be as great a miracle as flying.” He finds the answers in Ephesians 4:32-5:2. In order to really pursue holiness, we need to rely on God’s power, to imitate him, and to remember that to whom much is given, much is expected.

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for possession, so that you might speak of the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; (1 Peter 2:9 NKJV)

Could anyone be given more than we have? And with that in mind, can we decide to seek reconciliation, remembering that we are required forgive all, but only to seek to reconcile with those who are repentant, not those who are unrepentant. For the unrepentant, we need only wait and respond to their genuine repentance if and when it comes. I should have known God would not require more of me than he would equip me to do.

If we do not have a proper understanding of the dichotomous nature of man, then we are going to practice a form of godliness that has no power.

Consider these verses:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God….
—Romans 8:16

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
—Hebrews 4:12

These passages make a distinction between soul and spirit. That distinction is important because failing to split them results in a failure to know how Christians are to live by the Spirit.