Living Learn

Living what we learn

Prayer is a dialogue NOT a monolgue. God commands and encourages us to come and converse with Him without ceasing and that is the force behind Paul’s last words to the believers in Colossea.

Paul had just told them to allow Christ to dwell with understanding in their hearts and live out what they know of Him in their homes and at work. But ALL of this was impossible to accomplish in a way which is pleasing to God, if it is done FOR God rather than with and by Him.

Continue reading
Job Crosses Bildad

Job crosses the line… Well, several actually

By chapter 7 Job has come to the point in his calamities where he is reconsidering the nature of God.

The lines Job begins to cross are in thinging that even if he had sinned and repented, God would simply plunge him back into the mire of guilt since He is determined to destroy him. He believes that God protects the wicked and punishes the innocent and that God literally laughs and takes pleasure in the adversities of the blameless.

Making matters FAR worse is that Job keeps wishing for an audience with God to present his case, as if God cannot hear him and as if he could not just do so at any time in prayer.

Bildad is the friend who addresses Job in these chapters. He steps in and offers very solid counsel. However, like their friend Eliphaz, he comes to wrong conclusions because of he believes Job’s troubles are due to unconfessed and un-repudiated sin.

Continue reading
Imitation Admiration

Imitation from admiration IS the Gospel!

The recurring theme of Paul’s letter to the Colossian believers was to stay centered on Jesus.

Our lives are hidden with Christ in the Father. This implies a need to seek Him, discover Him in growing and intimate ways.

The overall picture is very much like a young boy who imitates his father who he looks up to. He admires him and wants nothing more than to be just like him. He pays attention to what he does, where he goes, what he likes, what he wears and becomes SO influenced by him, that he begins to acclimate to his ways. This is not just by means of forced imitation, but through loving admiration – his find himself influenced by his father to the point that he is becoming like him without any real effort at all.

THAT is the gospel!

Continue reading