“Seeing the Unseen Christ” (Week 8)
by Eric Rajaniemi
How did you do with last week’s questions? Normally we
think of suffering as being the very last thing we want to
experience. We would avoid it if we could. But suffering
does serve a very necessary purpose in our lives. If there
was no suffering we would never know when we had cut
ourselves severely. We would not know that we were
feverish. We would not ever know when we were hurt.
Suffering alerts us to the fact that there is something
wrong with a part of us, that we must attend to it and
correct it.
Jesus took suffering to another level. He used His
suffering upon the Cross to create a way for each of us to
become redeemed of our sins. His godly suffering
becomes a model for us today. My suffering due to sin in
my life alerts me to there being something spiritually
wrong in my life. Therefore I must work at fixing that
situation in order to become more holy. I need to ask
Jesus to nail that sin to His Cross for me, to remove it
from my life. This is where prayer comes into play and is
very important. If I do not ask God to help me remove
this sin I will not receive God’s help to remove it.
Because Jesus suffered upon the Cross He now
understands how we feel when we are suffering. This
enables Him to extend mercy to us while we are going
through suffering. His faithfulness is demonstrated by Him
remaining with us, helping to guide us through the
suffering in order to endure it and come out of it more
holy than we were before. Suffering creates character in
each of us. Suffering provides us with opportunities to
make positive choices or negative choices. God desires us
to always make positive choices for Him.
This week’s scripture is Ephesians 6:10-18. We begin to
look at embracing righteousness and renouncing evil this
week. We are sent out into this world by Jesus to continue
sharing His Gospel message of salvation through Him.
But in doing this we will find ourselves in the company of
people who probably will make us uncomfortable, maybe
even fearful.
Jesus was correctly accused by the religious leaders of
His day of being a friend of sinners. This, however, did not
mean that Jesus was tolerant of sin. If we do not follow
the example of Jesus and befriend sinners, many people
are not ever going to learn about God’s love. However, in
the process, we need to be careful to renounce Satan and
all that he stands for and embrace righteousness.
This passage in Ephesians informs us that our struggle
in life is not with flesh and blood people but with spiritual
wickedness, with Satan. In order to defend ourselves
against him this passage reveals that we must clothe
ourselves in God’s armor. We are told what each piece of
armor represents. Why is this so important? When we go
out and start talking to people about Jesus Satan is going
to be there trying to prevent them from listening to us.
We do not become angry when people begin to cuss us
out or threaten to become physical. We disengage and go
elsewhere. It is necessary to engage in prayer to ensure
that we have invited Christ to be involved in what we are
doing.
(1) What types of protection does God provide for us as
we embrace righteousness and renounce evil?
(2) Which of these protections do you tend to not use
for yourself? What are the results?
(3) Christians often do not want to be known as soldiers
or warriors, or openly admit that they are involved in
spiritual warfare. How would you deal with verse 17?
(4) When faced with problem people in your life, do you
tend to focus exclusively on flesh and blood? How
might spiritual forces be involved and what could
they be trying to force you to do?
(5) Verse 12 tells us that we wrestle with wickedness and
not with people. How do our senses mislead us into believing
that people are our problem? How much are each of us slaves
to our physical senses?
Perhaps by the end of this week you will sense that there
are other areas of your life in which you are vulnerable to
being attacked by Satan. Pray to God, ask Him to help
you figure out why this is so. Ask Him to help you use the
armor of God in better ways.
You can leave comments at the end of each of these blog
messages. I will attempt to reply in a timely manner to
each one.
Have a blessed day, mercy and grace be yours!
Eric
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