There is a regrettable tendency in Christian circles to make too much of marriage and relationships so to correct the balance here's a collection of hard won wisdom on singleness. I call it hard won because I learnt most of these lessons the hard way and I call it wisdom because not a single piece of it is from me! All of it has dropped, like the proverbial pearl, from the tongues of others and it is all routed in biblical wisdom.
The Superiority of Jesus Christ over the opposite sex The four great words to remember here are: no marriage in heaven. Well, that's not entirely true, there is marriage in heaven but it is the marriage of Christ and the church. This should remind us that Jesus should be first in our hearts for that's where he'll be when we're in heaven! It's good to keep this sense of perspective: human marriage is finite and only a picture of the eternal union of Christ and the church. Likewise, Jesus died for your sins, he is your High Priest, you have no better friend, when everything is taken from you then through Christ you can still have lost nothing. Compared to your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse, well, it's not a competition. You can lose a human relationship; you can't lose Christ, he will not allow it. Don't make a relationship an idol. "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. (Jeremiah 2v13) Don't dig a marriage cistern, keep in mind that God is the spring of living water.
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Show me a Christian who does not pray and I will declare him to be no Christian at all. For we, as Christians, have been given the Spirit of adoption that cries: "Abba, Father!"; we have not been given a Spirit of silence. Yet even though we have this Spirit within us it is still possibly to be lax in the discipline of prayer and we can lose sight of the incredible power of prayer.
"The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops." James 5 v 16 - 18 Queen Victoria once said that she feared the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies of the world; she was, at least, wise for saying so. For as James writes: the prayer of a Christian is powerful and effective. Notice as well the example James uses to back it up, "Elijah was a human being, even as we are." If we needed encouragement to pray then here we have it! Elijah was just like you and me yet his prayers stopped and started the rain! Likewise, our prayers are powerful and effective. If you pop over to my church's website right here then you'll find three great sermons to listen to.
The first is on Satanic Oppression and the reality of the unseen powers we fight against but how God limits them and Christ is victorious over them! The next is on God's Fatherly discipline of his people for their holiness and how we should not grow weary under the difficulties of life. Based on Hebrews 12. And the third is on Repentance - it's a two part-er on Psalm 51 and David's repentance over his adultery and murder. These sermons, in my biased opinion, perfectly illustrate the reason why Reformed theology is so needed and that the evangelical church misses so much by straying from its doctrines. The reason I say this is because these sermons deal with the hard reality of Christian living. Behind each sermon is a recognition that we are, even as those saved, still extremely sinful! More, that Satan is a very real and present danger and that God's love for us compels him to take action against the sin in our lives. I've felt the need of being encouraged recently and these sermons have been a real meeting place of the soul with Christ, by his grace we feasted together and I have gone away refreshed! |
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