Good morning. I think we
will have a very interesting combination this morning. We're going to start
with Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change ... It then goes on
to talk about all kinds of bad things happening to the world. But we're looking
at the word change. We all hate change when it looks like there may be
something bad coming. We have a fear of the unknown. Better the devil you know
than the one that you don't know. I especially do not like change. However I
usually adapt to it fairly quickly. There is a comfort in the same routine day
after day. But of course that can be called being in a rut. If you keep digging
the rut deeper and deeper, at some point you then cannot see over the edge and
then you call it a ditch. Keep digging and it's a canyon. Change can be good or
bad. It's what we allow God to do with it that makes a difference. As the Psalm
says when it is God doing the changing there is nothing to fear. Verse 10:
cease striving and know that I am God. When we fight against His changing, then
we're fighting against God Himself. So we need to determine is it God that's
doing the changing, or is it something else? And then an unusual verse to go
along with this from second Peter. But the present heavens and earth by His
word are being reserved for fire, kept for the Day of Judgment and destruction
of ungodly men. Revelation 21: and I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the
first heaven and the first earth passed away. How does this relate? God does
not take away the old (change something) without providing something new and
even better. If God is doing the changing there is nothing to fear – it will be
even better than ever. Father help the reader to know when change is from You
and when it's not. Help him/her to be confident that if it is You, then it will
be even better than ever.
Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me
Good morning. Paul then gives a list of a lot of things that he has gone through as an apostle. I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. There could be many people that you listen to either in church or through the Internet or other means; but there was only one person (as a general rule it was a person) that lead you to Christ. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. He was saying that just like a child imitates his or her father, they were to imitate him. He says that again seven chapters later. Since it is easy to forget some things about people we have not seen in a while, Paul says that he sent Timothy to them to remind them of his ways which are in Christ, just as he taught everywhere in every church. Some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. I shall find ou...
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