The Beauty of God's Word

It is indeed a joy and even a certain amount of ecstasy when one reads the Bible and the words seem to jump out of the pages or verses that you may have read a hundred times before suddenly seem to give new insights or revelations.

Over the past couple of days I have been doing concurrent readings of 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy and in the mirror of God's Word, so much error in my thinking and theology have been exposed and indeed I praise God for the grace that He has given in revealing them to me. There is so much that the Lord is leading me to consider and I hardly know where to start or what to write down first, but I shall try to put in a coherent manner despite my own messy way of thinking.

"What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth."
- 1 Corinthians 3: 5-8 (ESV)

As I have shared before, so often I have fallen into sinful pride, in thinking that I was someone, a boy who knew more about God's Truth than most of his peers and the only person whom God could use to preach the truth in his church. But as I read this passage again, what is the man whom God uses but a person He so chooses to pour out His Grace upon? As one of my favourite preachers said, "I always remind myself [if ever I become proud in my own preaching] that God can speak through rocks and donkeys." Indeed the Lord uses the foolish to confound the wise and the wisdom of this world is folly to God.

In addition to this, this morning when I awoke there was this subtle yet obvious temptation in my flesh to dabble again in lustful thoughts, a habitual sin in my mind that has plagued me for more than a decade. And as I struggled against it as I always do, I read the two passages of 1 Corinthians that I had earmarked for today. And lo and behold, chapters 5 and 6 contained Paul's warnings against sexual immorality. Needless to say, the temptation subsided really quickly after that. May the Lord grant me the grace to remain holy as He is Holy.

"Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s."

- 1 Corinthians 6: 18-20

I have more thoughts regarding some things in 1 Timothy that God has impressed upon me regarding the false ascetism and super-spirituality that so often I have mistaken as closeness to God, but I shall probably write it down another time God willing.

One other thing that the Lord seems to be pressing upon me is whether, in my cynicism and caution, I have in a way despised or "quenched" the Spirit. While I believe that God is the indeed the God of miracles and a God who heals, there is a certain part of me that seems over-cautious and unbelieving when dealing with what is often termed now as "moves of the Spirit". Now I do dislike the way certain people seem to treat God and the Holy Spirit with a certain amount of irreverence or as a miracle vending machine that they can pull miracles out at will, but there is a sense that I may have become too judgemental and in the process may have inadvertently blasphemed against the work of the Holy Spirit.

“And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven."

- Luke 12:10

May the Lord grant me wisdom and mercy in discerning this.