The Mystery of Human Life Infographic

Look who made her first infographic!  It’s not perfect, but I think it’s pretty good for a first-timer!

For more information on the content of this infographic please visit Living Stream Ministry.

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Loved this post on walking by the spirit and Romans 8:4.

A Crazy Lover of Jesus

Hello Fellow Lovers of Jesus!

This morning (though I realize that it’s 10pm at night lol) I really enjoyed musing over Romans 8:4 “That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit.”

There is so much to say about this verse, but what I appreciated from reading it and praying over it is realizing that the law is just a testimony of God Himself. Everything that a person may write or say automatically conveys who that person is in their being. Thus, what a person speaks or writes about themselves is very much related to who they are. With this in view, the law is just a testimony of all that God is in His person. As we all know, God is perfect in every way, but we are His creatures that were created…

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Channels of Life

Have you ever considered that

“Life is God the Father in Christ Jesus / As the Spirit flowing into us. / How enjoyable, this Person wonderful! / He’s our life so rich and bountiful.”

I love this song.  It reminds me that eternal life isn’t simply some amount of time i’ll spend in heaven after I die.  Eternal life is a person, Jesus Christ (John 1:4, 5:26, 11:25).  When someone prays to receive the Lord and to be born again or regenerated, they are actually receiving the eternal life of God into them.  WOW!  That is amazing.  Can you imagine?  The God of the universe wants to put His very life inside of measly little sinners like us.  Incredible.

But God has no intention of stopping with us.  He wants to flow out of us and into other people.  This is the topic of my morning devotional this week that some of us in Christians on Campus are going through.

In 1 John 5:14-16 we see John’s word concerning how to take care of a brother who is sinning a sin “not unto death.”  John tells the reader that “If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask and he will give life to him, to those sinning not unto death” (v. 16).  GIVE LIFE TO HIM.  How in the world am I supposed to give life, eternal life, to someone else???  This sounds awesome, and it’s pretty amazing that the Bible says we can participate in this, but how?

Our devotional says “If we enjoy eternal life and experience it, surely we shall be able to channel this life to others.  We shall be able to minister eternal life to other members of the Body.”  In John 7:38 Jesus tells a huge crowd of people “He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.”

Jesus gave a similar declaration to the Samaritan woman in John 4:13-14.  “Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again, But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water spring up into eternal life.”  So here we have a connection between the eternal life of God and the living water.  The living water is the life of God experienced by us!  Hallelujah!

Back to John 7:38.  I have heard this verse explained by saying that the rivers are actually the various divine attributes of God (love, light, etc.) spreading into our soul (which is awesome), but this devotional expounded it in a different way.  It says “In chapter seven the living water is not only in us, but it also has become rivers of living water.  It flows out of us into others and supplies others with life and satisfies their thirst.  God is not satisfied with us only having His life; He wants His life to flow out of us.”

This was a completely new view on the rivers of living water in John for me.  Totally caught me off guard, but this is exactly what 1 John is talking about, this is the life that we can minister to our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

The devotional continues:

“Today God is seeking people into whom He can dispense Christ’s life more and more so that they can supply others with His life.  Life needs channels, and God wants men to be the channels through which His life can flow to others.  May the Lord gain us so that we can have a life-supplying ministry and supply others with life.”

Oh Lord!  Make me a person that You can flow through!  I don’t want to bottle You up inside of me!  Make me a channel of life!  I want to flow out to my coworkers!  To my family!  To my friends!

“Eternal life not only takes care of our own need; it also takes care of the need of the fellow members around us.  It overcomes death within us, and it overcomes death within our brothers.  Especially, it overcomes death in those who are weak or who have problems.”

Both of my parents are psychologists.  They know how to give therapy and talk people into feeling better.  But I can’t do that.  I don’t like doing that.  People and their problems scare and intimidate me because I don’t know what to say or what to do.  But I’m so encouraged by this word!  People don’t need me!  They don’t need my good advice or similar experiences!  They just need God!  God is the only One that can meet everyone’s every need!  I just need to flow out the God that I have been enjoying!  This is so sweet!  I’m no therapist, but I can be a channel of life!  Hallelujah!

(Me trying to give therapy ^)

The Discipline of the Holy Spirit – Christians on Campus college meeting

This week in the meeting for college students, we talked about the discipline of the Holy Spirit.  Most of the fellowship was based on part of a chapter in the book Knowing Life and the Church by Witness Lee.

When I first read the title of our reading for the night, I was kind of scared.  Wow, discipline.  Really?  I came here tonight to get disciplined?  I should of stayed home.

But we actually had some really sweet fellowship.

Our reading starts off by saying “God’s arrangement, ordination, permission, and move in our environment are the discipline of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit rules over our environment, and He moves and arranges everything to break our person.”

Ouch.  “Break our person.”  That sounds awesome.  Sign me up…not.

Further down the page, however, Romans 8:28 is referenced.  “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”  Usually, when I hear this verse, I think “Great.  All things are going to work out for good.  That means I’ll get an A on my test, none of my kids will go crazy today, all will be well.”  But actually, that’s not the context of this verse.  Romans 8 is all about freedom in the Spirit and the Christ who lives in us.  Verse 17 says “And if children, heirs also; on the one hand, heirs of God; on the other, joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified with Him.”  The verse following 8:28 says “Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers.”  So, according to these two verses, the good that is to be worked out in verse 28 is just the gaining of more God so that we can be full-grown sons of God, and even heirs of God.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul tells us that he petitioned the Lord three times to remove “a thorn in the flesh” (v. 7).  This was not an actual thorn, but rather something in his environment or even a physical suffering arranged by God.  I don’t know about you, but whenever there’s something in my environment that causes me to suffer, you better believe I’m praying to have it taken away.  And you would think that Paul, someone who wrote 13 books of the New Testament, would surely be able to break through in prayer and miraculously turn a bad situation into a pleasant one.

But what was God’s reply to Paul’s thorn-removal request?  “My grace is sufficient for you” (v. 9).  Can you believe that?  God wouldn’t even take away Paul’s thorn.  PAUL’S.  I mean, wouldn’t God want to take it away so that Paul would be able to do more?  Write more?  Travel more?  Preach more?  How could Paul do all those things if he was suffering?

This is why fellowshipping with others is so wonderful.  The reading pointed out that “Our thorn (whatever it may be – family, work, roommates) will continue to pierce us, trouble us, and bother us.  This is the environment that God has created to cause us to know the Lord’s grace and to experience the Lord’s power.”  I find that the times I pray the most and rely on God the most is when I’m going through a difficult situation.  Usually, when everything is smooth sailing I forget about God and live independently from His grace.  No breaking.  No conforming.  But as soon as something pops up that gives me a hard time, I’m forced to turn to Him once again.

“If we submit ourselves to the Lord and receive this, we will meet the Lord within, and we will be blessed by having life as the power that carries us through and enables us to endure what we could not endure.”  The Lord is so sweet.  Every single person on this earth goes through difficult situations, but one thing I saw last night was that the difference between an unbeliever and a believer.  A believer has the potential to gain God and experience God’s grace and power when he is going through a difficult situation.  We don’t have to do anything!  Hallelujah!  We can just sit back and enjoy God.  We don’t have to be like the unbelievers who struggle through hard times and have to rely on their own limited strength to carry them through.  We have the almighty God who is just waiting for us to open up and call on Him so that He can be everything to us and meet our every need.  This is a real enjoyment in the Christian life.