Have you been discouraged—at least to some degree—in the past year? The past month? This week? Are you discouraged right now? On a regular basis, we all become discouraged because we all have problems. Life is really made up of three stages that continually repeat themselves. We are either in a problem, coming out of a problem, or going into a problem.
Our attitudes toward ourselves and why we are here are determined more than anything else by how we picture God. Only when we realize what an awesome God created us will we begin to know who we are and why we are here. When David begins to realize who God really is, he writes Psalm 8. In this great psalm, David tells us five things about God that help us understand who we are and why we are here.
The book of Psalms is designed to focus our thoughts on God. The Hebrew word translated psalm means “praise.” It signifies singing with the accompaniment of musical instruments (Psa. 150). Psalms has 150 chapters—more than any other book in the Bible. Psalms also has several authors. King David wrote about half of the psalms; Moses wrote Psalm 90; Asaph (Ay′-saf), worship leader at the tabernacle, wrote about a dozen; and most of the others are anonymous.The psalms are expressions of human feelings, ranging from great joy and happiness to deep sorrow and repentance. Some psalms tell us how to deal with sin and find spiritual renewal. Others teach us how to worship God. We will begin our “journey from despair to delight” in Psalm 1 by discovering some secrets for finding lasting happiness, the first of which is …
Paul ends his letter to the Ephesians with a descriptive warning about spiritual warfare. As believers, we are engaged in a spiritual battle against sophisticated, evil forces that want to prevent us from having a “journey into Spirit-filled living.” The Evil One is far more powerful and intelligent than we are. Therefore, unless we learn what the Bible tells us about Satan’s tactics and the spiritual weapons available to us, we are doomed to defeat. To win the spiritual war, we must do at least three things …
There are two places where Spirit-filled living shows up most—home and work. In the previous passage, we learned about the Spirit-filled husband-wife relationship. This passage is about living the Spirit-filled life in our homes and at work; and it contains God’s Word to children, parents, employees, and employers. Let’s continue our “journey” by looking at
Imagine a man who buys a new luxury automobile with heated, 6-way power leather seats, dual climate control, GPS, MP3 player, state of the art radio, etc. Then, he shows it to all his friends and lets them sit in the fancy seats and look at the dazzling cockpit. However, the man can’t use any of the accessories, and he pushes the car everywhere he goes, in the heat and cold, because he doesn’t know the car has an engine to power it all. So, the luxury automobile that was supposed to be a blessing to him is a burden.
Many Christians are like that man because they don’t know the Christian life has an “engine.” The engine in the Christian life is the Holy Spirit. God never intended we live the Christian life on our own. He wants us to live the Spirit-filled life, which requires we do two things …
Ephesians was written to Christians living in a notoriously immoral, sinful culture. For example, the main religion in Ephesus, the “sin city” of its day, was the worship of the multi-breasted goddess Artemis (Ar′-tuh-mis), or Diana (kjv). Statues portrayed her with multi-breasts exposed to depict her gift of fertility. The huge, official statue in Ephesus was housed at her dazzling temple, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The marble temple, which took 120 years to build, was approximately 225 feet wide by 425 feet long. That is more than twice as wide as a football field and about one and half times as long. There were 127 marble columns, 60 feet tall, on the porch surrounding the temple. The worship of sex in Ephesus is no different from our culture today. They worshiped sex through Artemis, while our culture worships sex through TV, books, movies, the internet, etc. It’s all based on a false idea of love. The world lives in lust, while Spirit-filled living is living in love. This passage reveals four requirements for living in love …
