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Written by Jessica Ptomey
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Last Friday Lane broke down for us his interpretation of the phrase "God's still in control," and he explained at least three fundamental problems with that statement as a response to a decision, or specifically a political election, not going according to our ideal. (1) We are treating God's sovereignty as a consolation prize; (2) we are divorcing God's sovereignty from the results; and we are treating God's office as if it has term limits. After contemplating the teaching (and brief launch into discussion), I am responding to the question of how we can re-engage God's sovereignty in our lives-whether in the area of government or any other aspect of our lives.
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| If you study the New Testament to any degree of depth, over time you come to a pretty startling realization. The greatest dangers that the church faced from the time immediately following Jesus' ascension until the composition of the NT were internal issues. This does not mean that paganism, atheism or governmental persecution were not legitimate fears, just that they did not rank in lethal effect with things like false teachers and heresy.
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| There is no question that faith plays an incredibly pivotal role in our Christianity. A simple word search in the NIV finds it occurring 266 times. Admittedly this tells us nothing about the word itself, or the various words used in the Greek behind the English translation. But it does tell us that it is something of focus.
When we grab a few of these occurrences for a simple surface study, we glean of the importance faith to our life. It seems as if Jesus is consistently questioning his disciples as to where theirs is. Then, in stark contrast, a Roman centurion who has never spent a single day with Jesus is praised for having the greatest faith in all of Israel. Arriving in the Epistles, Paul writes that faith is something we receive from hearing the gospel, and that we are then justified of our guilt through our faith. So obviously it is of importance.
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| I'm giving you here the two main pasasges that we are going to look at this Friday evening. I want to specifically, over the next several months, take time to define the importance of "faith" as it relates to our eternal salvation with Christ. Additionally, I want to discuss how faith is developed, strengthened and activated. With the pre-session work, you should not look at this as a "quiz" or a "test." I'm not expecting you to find the answers to these questions and then come on Friday to see if you got the answers right. Instead, this is to get you to spend time with God and with His Word so that as I teach on Friday, you will have an advanced context to work with and a sense of preparedness that will, I believe, allow the Spirit to bring the points home all the more.
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"If you want to build a ship, don't summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Fines Origine Pendet" - "The end depends upon the beginning"
Motto on Seal of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA
If you think about it carefully enough, both of these quotes have bearing upon what we are doing in gathering together in a bible study, and the reason for the lesson we looked at on the first night. Using Saint-Exupery's quote, I think all of us could agree that we would rather look to know God better than we would simply to know the Bible better. Thus, before we start gathering the tools of study, it's appropriate that we each develop a longing for the boundless ocean of the knowledge of God himself before we start worrying about the wood, tools and work of bible study. Additionally, if we consider the wisdom of the Phillips Academy motto, then we should want to start off with the right objective and the right course bearing if we hope to actually end up somewhere and to do well along the way.
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