“The
wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and
wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may
be known about God is plain to them.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power
and divine nature- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been
made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither
glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile
and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged
the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds
and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful
desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies
with one another. They exchanged the
truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the
Creator-who is forever praised. Amen
Because of this, God gave them over to
shameful lusts. Even their women
exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women
and were inflamed with lust for one another.
Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves
the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile
to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do
what ought not to be done. They have
become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife,
deceit, and malice. They are gossips, 30
slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of
doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless,
heartless, ruthless. Although they
know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they
not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who
practice them.”
Romans
1:18-32
“But
mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers
of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful,
unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal,
not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God- having a form of godliness but denying its power.
Have nothing to do with them.”
2
Timothy 3:1-5
As I
wrote in my last post, I’m going through a book on Godly relationships at the
moment. No, not just relationships as in
couples but also how families, friends, and leaders relate to each other. The book is titled Love One Another: The
Importance and Power of Christian Relationships (New Edition) by Gordon
Ferguson. Beware, I can talk a while
about what he has to say!
Wow,
this guy is blunt! Chapter 1 is about
how the world and our sinful nature pushes worldliness by “misused sexuality”,
materialism, selfishness, and pride and how our worldly perception changes our
modern relationships from godly to self-focused. The lust section wasn’t surprising to
me. It is probably the most discussed
sin in the modern world and one I know I need to work on. He did give some good advice on how to change
the awkward modern mindset of lust into everyone being one big family,
including asking for advice and praying for a better mindset, but it didn’t
surprise me as much as the other sections did.
His different and blunt interpretation of
the Gospel of Luke is hard to read. I’m
sitting here in a room so full of stuff that I’m constantly searching for things
and reading about John the Baptist defining repentance as (Luke 3:7-14) giving
away ANY non-essential clothes/stuff and not augmenting one’s salary by force
or lies. Now that is hard! One question he says to ask to test if you
love your things is to ask how much you would give up. Would you be willing to leave everything
behind, or sell everything for charity, to go live in poverty somewhere to
minister to people? Would you give up
all your comforts here to be a missionary in some village that barely exists on
a map? I don’t think I could. I’ve packed everything in a storage unit and
lived out of a few suitcases for a few months to travel and study abroad but I
kept buying things as I traveled and took comfort knowing that all my stuff was
safely waiting for me. Can I give away
or sell all my stuff for any reason? I
know I should (I haven’t used most of my stuff in months) but I love my stuff
and I love buying to create another idea.
I am going to have to work hard on my materialism.
Selfishness was another eye-opener. It’s another sin that is preached about but
Ferguson shows things a little differently.
Besides the usual definitions of living for pleasure and blaming life
instead of ourselves and our lack of self-control for our faults and sins, our
self-consciousness and tendency to protect our hearts keep us from sharing the
Gospel with everyone we see and from opening our hearts for deeper
relationships with everyone in our lives.
By protecting ourselves from hurt, we hide parts of ourselves and keep
people at a distance. Wow, I never
thought of that. Okay, modern psychology
says that a lot but it’s easy to forget.
Even insecurity is bad since it is focusing on ourselves and how others
view us than on God. That is a different
way of explaining things that Gordon Ferguson has and it is powerful!
Pride is another sin. It’s often the hardest sin to detect because
some people can be proud of how virtuous they are! Modern society seems to be based on pride, at
least in the U. S. Take pride in your
work! Be proud of your body! Make your
family proud! How many times have you
heard that you should be proud? American
marketing makes money from making you want to be the best or to have what
someone “better” than you has. It’s hard
not to be proud in some way and he says that even insecurity is a way of
maintaining a person’s pride. True
humility is very hard to do and something I don’t understand. He suggests finding all the verses in the
Bible that mention pride, applying them to each reader, and see how we
fair. I doubt I would look very good.
This was a hard chapter to read but it
shows how the New Testament is supposed to “show our sins” as well as “show our
Savior.” I’ve been focusing on the
loving Savior so much that it is easy to forget the long list of sins that I’ve
committed that it says are washed away by Jesus’s blood.
Thank you, Jesus, for being perfect for me
since I can’t do it on my own.
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