Author: ingwee

1 Timothy 4:12 Let no one despise your youth but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine …We are a team of professionals working hard to provide free learning content..

“It is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Php 2:13 NIV

When it comes to doing what pleases God, there are two major hurdles you need to overcome—the “want to” and the “able to.” Relinquishing your own plans and embracing God’s will doesn’t come easily. Your old fleshly nature wants what it wants, not what God wants. And even when God’s will is clear, and you want what He wants, you lack the necessary ability to do it. Fortunately, that’s where God steps into your dilemma by working in you to give you the “want to” and the “ability to.” But the willingness and the capability both come from Him, not you. You ask, “Since God is working in me, why is there such a struggle to know and to do His will?” The problem is, your natural mind is self-centered and tends to resist God’s will. So what’s the answer? (1) Surrender your body and its appetites to God. “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Ro 12:1 NIV). (2) Renew your mind. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Ro 12:2 NIV). In the original Greek, “renewal” means to be “inwardly renovated” by aligning your thoughts with God’s—to intentionally think like He thinks. In other words, God initiates the “want to” and the “ability to,” and you cooperate by aligning your mind with His. When that happens, you can be confident “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (Php 1:6 NIV).

These are the ones who . . . bear fruit with endurance. —Luke 8:15.

In the illustration of the sower found at Luke 8:5-8, 11-15, the seed is “the word of God,” or the Kingdom message. The soil represents man’s figurative heart. The seed that fell on the fine soil took root, sprouted, and “produced 100 times more fruit.” Just as the fine soil in Jesus’ illustration retained the seed, we accepted the message and held on to it. As a result, the seedlike Kingdom message took root and grew, as it were, into a wheat stalk that, in time, was ready to bear fruit. And just as a wheat stalk produces as fruit, not new stalks, but new seed, we are producing as fruit, not new disciples, but new Kingdom seed. How do we produce new Kingdom seed? Each time we in one way or another proclaim the Kingdom message, we duplicate and scatter, so to speak, the seed that was planted in our heart. (Luke 6:45; 8:1) Hence, this illustration teaches us that as long as we keep on proclaiming the Kingdom message, we “bear fruit with endurance.”