Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Sunday, October 20, 2013
The relationship and correlation between the Doctrine of the Royal Family Honor Code and how it relates to putting on the Breastplate of Righteousness.
God has given us everything that we need to handle and experience every realm of our personal sense of destiny.
Suffering for blessing is the undeserved pain, hardship, or difficulty that God periodically sends into the life of the spiritually adult believer for the purpose of accelerating his spiritual growth.
God provides the means of dealing with a situation before He applies the pressure so that suffering for blessing never overloads any believer.
The power of Christ may dwell in me is that God’s power is achieved when we pick up the full armor of God as we are going through personal with weakness.
Dunamis = power, it refers to God’s omnipotence as utilized by the believer in the advance through spiritual adulthood: SSE, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity.
The verb teleo, which is translated in 2CO 12:9 for power is perfected” means “to finish, to accomplish, to fulfill, to achieve.”
en astheneia = in the instrumental case of manner indicates the manner in which the action of the verb is carried out:”with weakness.”
“Weakness” refers to the progressive phases of suffering for blessing.
Weakness here is not failure or sin but helplessness.
Suffering for blessing puts the spiritually adult believer in a situation he cannot resolve with human resources.
The suffering itself does not advance the believer; it is his utilization of God’s power in suffering is what advances him.
Power and weakness exist together at the same time: the adult believer uses the strength of spiritual self-esteem to move through his weakness in providential preventive suffering.
He uses the strength of spiritual autonomy to go through his weakness in momentum testing.
He uses the strength of spiritual maturity to move through his weakness in evidence testing.
When he succeeds in passing each test, he “achieves the power” of the next stage of spiritual adulthood.
What degree of strength is required to endure providential preventive suffering? = Spiritual self-esteem.
What power is required to pass momentum testing? = Spiritual autonomy?
And what is needed to pass evidence testing? = Spiritual maturity.
God gives each believer the unique sequence of blessing and suffering, of prosperity and adversity, necessary to bring him to maximum glorification of God.
Before God administers suffering for blessing, the believer
omust have the inner strength necessary to endure and profit from the test.
God will not send suffering for blessing until first the believer is confident in his relationship with God and in his own ability to use the assets that God has given him.
In ROM 14:22 The faith [doctrine] which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.
Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves: for that judgment touches the very center of our existence.
We are aware that the most intimate and powerful of all relationships and the one we can never escape is the relationship to ourselves.
No significant aspect of our thinking, motivation, feelings, or behavior is unaffected by our self-evaluation.
ISA 1:5 Where will you be stricken again, {As} you continue in {your} rebellion? The whole head is sick, And the whole heart is faint.
ISA 1:6 From the sole of the foot even to the head There is nothing sound in it, {Only} bruises, welts, and raw wounds, Not pressed out or bandaged, Nor softened with oil.
JER 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”
Man is born spiritually dead, utterly isolated from his Creator, totally incapable of a relationship with God, EPH 2:1.
Man proves his depravity by the personal sins he commits and by the human good and evil he practices.
Only by a concerted effort of the will can he even partly control his old sin nature, 1JO 1:8.
2CO 12:8, Paul is going to teach us that there is something that he discovered to solve his greatest problem, his thorn in the flesh problem, and that something is even greater than prayer.
1. Some believe it was a demon assigned to haunt Paul consistently and constantly.
2. Others believe it was a physical problem with his eyes which is why he wrote to the Galatian church, which is why he wrote.
GAL 4:15 Where then is that sense of blessing you had? For I bear you witness, that if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me.
GAL 6:11 See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.
3. Others believe it was his ex-wife because it was an unwritten law that to be a Pharisee you had to be married.
4. Others believed it was people testing.
5. Or distresses or pressure, thought testing.
6. Then there were those who considered it persecutions such as system testing or injustices.
7. Then finally difficulties or troubles such as disaster testing.
Paul did learn that prayer was not a problem-solving device.
1JO 5:14 And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
The prayer was not answered to teach Paul the importance of handling suffering for blessing with the two power options and the three spiritual skills and the ten problem solving devices.
The two power options are 1. The filling of the Spirit.
2. Bible doctrine in the mind, the heart and the soul.
The three spiritual skills,
1. The filling of the Spirit.
2. BD in the consciousness, mind, the heart and the soul.
3. Functioning under the PPOG.
The 10 PSD’s
1. Rebound and Recovery, 1JO 1:9
2. The Filling of the Spirit
3. The Faith Rest Life
4. Grace Orientation
5. Doctrinal Orientation
6. A Personal Sense of Destiny
7. Personal Love for God the Father
8. Impersonal Unconditional Love
9. Contentment and Perfect Happiness with God
10. The Ultimate-Occupation with TLJC
Insults or slandering (people testing), distresses or pressure (thought testing), persecutions (system testing or injustice), difficulties or troubles (disaster testing).
There is something that he discovered to solve his problems with that is ever greater than prayer and he is very happy or “Most gladly” willing to use what he discovered.
2PE 1:4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature,
I am facing insults or slandering (people testing), distresses or pressure (thought testing), persecutions (system testing or injustice), difficulties or troubles (disaster testing), and Most gladly I rejoice because of the power of God.
2CO 12:9……Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ [the operational spiritual life] may dwell in me.
The power that God has provided with the two power options and the three spiritual skills and the ten problem solving devices are God’s answers to our problems and the absolute and the only solution to our problems.
Slandering
(people testing), pressure (thought testing), persecutions (system testing or injustice), troubles (terrible anguish).
But, Paul applied the wrong solution to the problem.
The power at your disposal is phenomenal, but you will never touch it without straightening out your values and functioning on a consistent basis with the spiritual skills.
God does not need to perform miracles, when He has given us assets that were pioneered and tested by Christ in the dispensation of the hypostatic union.
Human viewpoint solutions in psychology.
Human viewpoint solutions in philosophy.
The arrogance skills and the defense mechanisms.
Legalism instead of grace.
Ignorance instead of cognition, gimmicks instead of doctrine.