Welcome back to part 2 of our series on blessings in the Kingdom of God. Last week we saw how much God cares for us, which can be a sticking-point for people who see God as more of a judge than a loving Father.
We also saw how the Kingdom of God is not something that we strive toward or reach for, but in-fact the Kingdom comes to us, through Jesus Christ. If you haven’t yet watched the previous study, I would encourage you to see that study first as we will be continuing upon that foundation today.
In this study, we will be looking at blessings and how they come to us, and also in what measure they come to us – the reality is greater than what we often think.
One of the most damaging deceptions that I have seen in my time, is the false idea that God just doesn’t care about us. I’ve seen it from many different angles, and this idea may take many different forms, but it’s all the same in the end. It leads people into hopelessness and despair, because it cuts off the source of help – almost like chopping a life-line, tipping over a rescue ladder, or sinking an emergency raft.
Think about it… if a person truly believes that the very author of life doesn’t really care about them, what hope do they have for any kind of help or solution to their problems? It takes the hill and turns it into a full-fledged mountain.
Many people feel this way today – as if God just plain doesn’t care about them, and has no interest in helping with their problems, and this very attitude has caused many to sever the one true life-line and source of help that exists, and it’s all based on nothing more than a deception.
Well, in this study today, I would like to squash that deception with the truth, that not only does God care, but He cares for your entire life – every aspect of it – even more than you could possibly imagine. And as you see this truth today, you will gain confidence and know that you are not alone, and you have a source of help, that you never knew you had.
If you’ve been reading the Bible for any length of time, you may be familiar with the words of Proverbs 4:23, which counsels us to be diligent to guard our heart, because the “issues of life” flow from it. And this has been interpreted to mean many different things… but if we aren’t sure what it means then we also can’t be sure if our heart is guarded properly!
Thankfully, the scriptures do not leave us guessing about how to guard our heart, and the benefits of doing so; and as we examine this today, we can see that it is not only simpler to guard our heart than we might think at first, but also incredibly beneficial for us to do so.
What role does the Holy Spirit of God have in your life? I have asked this question to a lot of people over the years, and I have heard a lot of different answers. Some people say that the Spirit of God tells us when we sin. Others say along a similar line, that the Spirit is our conscience, telling us wrong from right, good from evil. And of-course there are others still who just plain have no idea what the Spirit is for, or if the Spirit of God even exists today at all.
What I want to share with you today, is what the Bible says about the Spirit’s Role in our life today, and how the Spirit of God interacts with us. Jesus said that it would be better for us when He departed, because He would give us another Comforter, that being His Spirit – and He didn’t leave us guessing about who this Comforter was or what role the Spirit would have. So we shouldn’t be hesitant to look at it.
You have probably heard it quoted before, that you must fear the LORD thy God and serve Him only. This is a popular quote from scripture that seems to get a lot of circulation. Though in all of its popularity and use, it never really is explained what exactly this fear is. Are we to tremble and quake before a holy God as some preachers would have us do? Or does it mean something else entirely?
You might be surprised to learn that Biblical fear is something different than the kind of fear that we often associate with it today. It is by understanding the word fear as the Bible defines it, that we can begin to see what the scripture is actually telling us, versus what man merely assumes of it. This is what we will be studying today.
This week I was watching a Television show about the rich and famous. It showed the homes and property of the super-wealthy. A comment was made that it would be nice to be a part of that family just for the inheritance. That comment got me thinking, that we as believers are also part of a wealthy family, but many believers are still living far below their means.
Today we will be studying the inheritance that we have in Christ, specifically for the here and now. You see, we all know that we will receive a divine inheritance up in Heaven, but very few recognize that there are benefits on this earth as well, and so this is what we will be studying today.