I don't have anything profound to tell you about today, but I do want to tell you something. This post is going to be different, because I'm flat out going to tell you what God has been teaching me recently. May God do with it, as He pleases, but I'll do my part by sharing it with you. May you learn whatever God desires you to learn, but this is me simply telling you what God has been teaching me recently.
So it first came from my Bible teacher about three months ago. He was telling us about Job, and He said that God gave Job a choice. This choice included as follows:
1.) Job could hold the whole world in his hands
OR
2.) God would stay in control
In the end, Job realized he was not strong enough to control the whole world and it would probably be best to allow God to stay in control.
A couple months later, I came home, and saw a video on my news feed. The lyrics go a little something like this:
"And the arms that hold the universe are holding you tonight, you can rest inside, it's going to be alright. And the voice that calmed the raging sea is calling you His child. So be still and know He's in control. He will never let you go....You can hope, you can rise, you can stand. He's still got the whole in His hands."
This song has been the second, third, fourth, and so on.
So then, a couple nights ago, I pulled out my Bible and was reading. I have been working my way through Psalms and this verse caught my eye:
"I said to myself, 'Relax, because the Lord takes care of you.'"
In case you haven't got the point, there has been a reoccurring theme in my life recently. God has been slapping me in the face time and time again reminding me that HE is in control. Due to contrary belief, I do not have a perfect life, but God continually reminds me that I need to let go. However, because I'm human, that doesn't normally go over very well. I do not want to give God control because that means I have to allow Him to continue to strip away things in my life and poke and prod me in way I don't want Him to in order to make me the person He knows I need to be. But I am being reminded time and time again that God has a plan and He is in control. Nothing happens that He doesn't plan and nothing is out of His control.
I am constantly reminded of His power and how He is much stronger than I am or ever could be and therefore deserves to be in control of my life. He conquered a grave, can move mountains, stopped a raging sea, and holds the universe in His hands. If these are not signs of His immense power, I'm not sure what else is. And yet, I have the opportunity to leave my life in His hands. Where else could be greater?
And for you, dear reader, I challenge you to let go of whatever is going on in your life. May God teach you and remind you of His power and control. May God say to you as He did to me:
"(Insert your name here),You are not supposed to be in control. Do you understand why you can't figure all this out? It's because you were never supposed to. If you really want to hold the whole universe in your hands, go ahead. But if not, let me stay in control, I know what I'm doing."
If and when plan A, B, and C in your life start failing, know God's plan is coming through in the midst of all that. Allow Him to work. He is in control no matter how crazy life may seem. And above all, He may take everything you ever relied on away from you, but EACH STEP OF THE WAY, He will WALK WITH YOU. Continue to walk in Him and allow Him 100% control in your life.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Satan
As some of you know, I have been given the opportunity (yes, it really was an opportunity to do this, although many times it felt much more like a punishment) to do immense amounts of studying and learning about the word Satan. Although the project was long and a bit tedious, I have come to find that there are many things I was given the chance to take out of this project.
It would be incredibly difficult to share with you all the exciting things that I learned and write it in some neat and tidy form. So, I will spare you and only share with you a couple of the main things I learned or been reminded of by doing this project.
1. Satan completely hates God with everything in him. The desire of his whole being is to defeat God's plan of grace for each person and instead replace it with a plan of evil. He desires to ruin mankind and pull them away from God's clutches. There was one thing really caught my eye as I was reading through an article about this. It was the wording he used to explain Satan's hatred. He used the words "immense hatred." I can't really explain to you in full why it stuck out to me, but it did. Satan's only desire is to ruin mankind and the only reason he wants to do it is because He hates God and all that God does so much he wants to ruin God's perfect plan.
2. The only way that Satan's kingdom flourishes is by Satan's ability to tempt and deceive people. His kingdom is based fully on lies and nothing more. His deceit is done by him taking a truth and twisting it to turn it into something bad or taking an evil and pointing out only the good in it. These are the only things that make him able to stand against man. He cannot do anything else but these two things.
3. Satan's power is limited by Christ ultimately but also by human decision. Satan's ability to do these things is based completely on the sinner's choice to fall for the lie. Satan cannot convince a human to chose his ways. He can only lie to a sinner trying to convince them that what they are doing is right. However, it is mans decision in the end to believe the lie. The "human agent" must then be willing to accept the falsehood or his kingdom cannot stand.
4. Satan's power is also limited by what God allows him to do. A good example of this is in Job. Satan could only do to Job as God allowed him to do. God set up boundaries for what Satan could do and did not allow him to do things that weren't on that list. (Check out Job 1-2 for more information about that.) It is stated by Paul that, "No temptation has seized you accept what is common to man. But God is faithful. He will never let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. And when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." (1 Cor. 10:13) In other words, there is always a way out if we are willing to look for it. All in all to say, that Satan's power is completely limited by what God allows Satan to do. And God will never give us something He knows we cannot handle.
5. Satan is "limited, judged, condemned, imprisoned, and reserved for judgement from the beginning." (Louis Matthews Sweet)
That is just the beginning of what God has been teaching me throughout this year as I have been working on this project. It has really affected the way that I look at sin and the way I look at Satan and his power.
There are constant lies that Satan puts into my head as well as others and it's our choice, as Christians to ignore it and seek the truth or to accept the falsehood. By accepting it, we are allowing Satan to get into our head and continue to tempt and deceive us. And second, I have been pondering over the fact that Satan is defeated and so limited. God gives us nothing that He knows we can't handle and when we feel like we can't, we need to look to Christ, to find the way out that He has promised will always be there.
I greatly look forward to seeing what else God will teach me as I continue to dig into His Word and study it. It's so exciting to see and learn. So, as this project comes to a close, I look back at all the things I have been given the chance to learn and am truly thankful.
It would be incredibly difficult to share with you all the exciting things that I learned and write it in some neat and tidy form. So, I will spare you and only share with you a couple of the main things I learned or been reminded of by doing this project.
1. Satan completely hates God with everything in him. The desire of his whole being is to defeat God's plan of grace for each person and instead replace it with a plan of evil. He desires to ruin mankind and pull them away from God's clutches. There was one thing really caught my eye as I was reading through an article about this. It was the wording he used to explain Satan's hatred. He used the words "immense hatred." I can't really explain to you in full why it stuck out to me, but it did. Satan's only desire is to ruin mankind and the only reason he wants to do it is because He hates God and all that God does so much he wants to ruin God's perfect plan.
2. The only way that Satan's kingdom flourishes is by Satan's ability to tempt and deceive people. His kingdom is based fully on lies and nothing more. His deceit is done by him taking a truth and twisting it to turn it into something bad or taking an evil and pointing out only the good in it. These are the only things that make him able to stand against man. He cannot do anything else but these two things.
3. Satan's power is limited by Christ ultimately but also by human decision. Satan's ability to do these things is based completely on the sinner's choice to fall for the lie. Satan cannot convince a human to chose his ways. He can only lie to a sinner trying to convince them that what they are doing is right. However, it is mans decision in the end to believe the lie. The "human agent" must then be willing to accept the falsehood or his kingdom cannot stand.
4. Satan's power is also limited by what God allows him to do. A good example of this is in Job. Satan could only do to Job as God allowed him to do. God set up boundaries for what Satan could do and did not allow him to do things that weren't on that list. (Check out Job 1-2 for more information about that.) It is stated by Paul that, "No temptation has seized you accept what is common to man. But God is faithful. He will never let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. And when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." (1 Cor. 10:13) In other words, there is always a way out if we are willing to look for it. All in all to say, that Satan's power is completely limited by what God allows Satan to do. And God will never give us something He knows we cannot handle.
5. Satan is "limited, judged, condemned, imprisoned, and reserved for judgement from the beginning." (Louis Matthews Sweet)
That is just the beginning of what God has been teaching me throughout this year as I have been working on this project. It has really affected the way that I look at sin and the way I look at Satan and his power.
There are constant lies that Satan puts into my head as well as others and it's our choice, as Christians to ignore it and seek the truth or to accept the falsehood. By accepting it, we are allowing Satan to get into our head and continue to tempt and deceive us. And second, I have been pondering over the fact that Satan is defeated and so limited. God gives us nothing that He knows we can't handle and when we feel like we can't, we need to look to Christ, to find the way out that He has promised will always be there.
I greatly look forward to seeing what else God will teach me as I continue to dig into His Word and study it. It's so exciting to see and learn. So, as this project comes to a close, I look back at all the things I have been given the chance to learn and am truly thankful.
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