Tuesday, Jan 20, 2009

TWG - January 20, 2009 - Spirituality

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TWG – January 20, 2009
To Listen to Today’s Reading http://timewithgod.mypodcast.com
Joshua 5; Psalm 128; 1 John 5

Today is January 20, this is time with God, I’m Pastor Dennis - I’ve been waiting here for you. Welcome to our life transforming community. This is your invitation to take one step forward every day in your relationship with Christ. We invite you to do something unbelievably radical. We invite you to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Jesus

And there goes my day off! It’s over. I slept in until 6. Did Time With God, and loaded my truck to go work on a rental. Then I had to run some errands to pick up materials and by the time I got to the rental it was noon! Talk about losing half a day! How does that happen? I spent the rest of the day as builder Bob, and then came home to spend a quiet evening at home. I watched the Nativity Story Video. It was pretty good. I always expect more than I get when I watch videos about biblical events. But it was inspirational. I put a picture of John, talking on the phone on the blog at http://timewithgod.mypodcast.com. Check it out.

Today’s thought comes from 1 Corinthians 2:11-16 no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. 16 For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

Yesterday we met Carnal Karl. I want to introduce you to two of his friends. Natural Norman and Spiritual Stanly. Norm is an “unbeliever.” He has never trusted Christ. Because of that he doesn’t believe or agree with many of the spiritual truths of God’s Word. In fact some of them seem downright ridiculous to him. He doesn’t understand them because they take Spiritual discernment. That is the “norm” for Norm and every other unbeliever. But the man we want to talk about today is Stan. Spiritual Stan the spiritual man. If you want to change your heart from carnal to spiritual then you should find out how Stan became Mr. Spiritual. Spirituality has to do with our spirit and God’s Spirit. The reason Natural Norman can’t be spiritual is that he doesn’t have God’s Spirit. Lots of people in the world talk about their “spirituality,” REALITY CHECK, there can be NO spirituality without the Spirit of Christ living in the heart! Whenever a worldly Norman takes a step of faith to trust Christ he becomes a believer. From that moment on he can become one of two guys, Carnal Karl or Spiritual Stanly. The difference between Karl and Stan is that Stanly has one enormous desirable quality that Karl does not. Stan is teachable. In fact he is not only teachable, he has a humble heart eager to learn. He hungrily seeks the Kingdom. The key to spirituality is to be taught by the Spirit of God! And Stan has learned HOW the Spirit teaches! That’s Key! The Spirit teaches us by comparing and interpreting spiritual things with other spiritual things. The idea is that Scripture interprets Scripture, and to be a spiritual man we need to be taught by the Spirit of God through the Word of God! Simple concept, yet so sadly unemployed by so many. If you want to take the jump from Carnal to Spiritual… regularly, humbly, prayerfully and can I say spiritually place yourself at the feet of the Holy Spirit to be taught by the Word. When that happens you will gain the mind of Christ!

Dear Holy Spirit. I make myself available for you to teach. I want to be teachable so I choose to be humble. Change me as you will. Show me your wisdom from the Word. I am hungry and ready to learn!

Cast your burden on the LORD, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.

Posted by Dennis Kreiss at 10:46 AM |   

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