Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
Risking on God results in spiritual maturity and a completed edification complex.
Thursday, November 2, 2006
The PT is a grace gift given so that each member of the body of Christ can build his own edification complex in his own soul.
“building up” is oikodomen, which is the building up of the edification complex in the soul of each believer through what the PT communicates.
How many times have we been simply careless with our words around other believers? The tongue is a very powerful weapon for good or for evil.
With the right attitude you will help the other members of the body of Christ rather than just becoming another people test.
MAT 5:48 Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
1PE 5:10 And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.
EPH 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love,
ROM 8:29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren;
2CO 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
The bar has been set very high. In fact, it’s the highest bar to have ever been set, and it is for church age believers only.
HEB 11:8 By means of doctrine resident in the soul, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
Like Abraham, the invisible heroes of the church age took risks on God’s promises and on God’s commands and they failed miserably in doing so, but they picked themselves up and kept going.
But he is also trying to handle deserved and undeserved suffering and failing. Trying to apply doctrine and failing. And through all this interim time he comes to the conclusion that John the Baptist did in JOH 3:30.
JOH 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease.
We are commanded to imitate God in his character and virtue.
COL 3:12-13 And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other,
JOH 15:9 Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
I always have a choice of where I chose to focus my spiritual eyes, the eyes of my soul, or what my mind dwells on.
I can dwell on my failures, my shortcomings, my weaknesses, or all these things in others, or I can dwell on the character, nature, and virtue of God.
Once you have learned of the virtues of God, practice these things.
“practice” is the present active imperative of prasso, which means to do, to practice or to execute.
In the present tense it means to continue to try despite failure.
In the active voice it means that you must continue to try for yourself, no one can practice for you.
The qualifications that need to be in place before you practice the virtues of God is that you must learn them.
Believers begin the Christian way of life with enforced humility. When humility has been enforced long enough it turns into genuine humility.
The whole purpose of imitating God’s virtues, failing, persevering, and eventually succeeding is to develop those virtues genuinely in your heart.
By attempting the virtues of God the believer will fail at them and eventually he will learn to lay aside self while he is trying.
The risk involved is only as big as your lack of faith in the promises found in the mind of Christ