ON ALLOWING GOD TO TRANSFORM YOU - Ephesians 1:7–23
As believers in Christ, we are like diamonds in the rough—some of us more so than others. Sometimes, before God completes His work of chipping off the rough edges of our lives, we wonder how we could ever be valuable and lovable in God’s sight. That’s when we need to remember what fact found in Philippians 1:6?
This means God will transform us into the persons He wants us to be. It’s a process that takes a lifetime, and it’s all part of the Spirit-filled life. To understand how God can take “diamonds in the rough” like us and transform us into people who live Spirit-filled lives, we must do three things:
Beginning the Spirit-filled Life (Ephesians 1:1–6)
Pecos County in west Texas has a famous oil field known as the Yates Pool. During the Depression this oil field was a sheep ranch owned by a man named Yates. Mr. Yates was not able to make enough money ranching to pay his mortgage and was in danger of losing his ranch. Then, in 1926, an oil company asked Mr. Yates’ permission to drill a wildcat well on his ranch, and he signed a lease.
The first well came in at 80,000 barrels a day and some subsequent wells at more than twice that. Mr. Yates owned it all and yet was living in poverty. He owned it, but he did not possess it. He was like many Christians today who have untold spiritual riches, but they don’t possess them.
More than any other book in the Bible, Ephesians tells us how to possess the spiritual riches that are a result of living the Spirit-filled life. Beginning to live the Spirit-filled life requires three things …
One of life’s toughest problems is stress. The word “stress” relates to pressure applied either from the outside or inside. “Stress” is a term familiar not only to the medical field but also to engineering and architecture. When architects design a building, they are careful to calculate the stress-bearing capacity of the foundation, walls, and roof. They estimate the effects of wind, snow, and ice, and then allow a generous margin of stress safety.
God is the Divine Architect who designed you and me. He created us with a capacity to bear only so much stress, and He knows how much stress we can withstand (Psa. 103:14a). To strangle stress, we must know the causes of stress and the cure for stress.
Have you ever felt like a failure as a Christian, parent, husband, wife, friend, or as a person? We all have our setbacks and defeats—times when we feel like failures. Sometimes, failure even overwhelms us. The Bible is a series of stories about failures. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and caused the entire human race to fall. Noah got drunk. Moses killed an Egyptian and had to flee to the desert. David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then murdered her husband. Simon Peter denied the Lord. John Mark deserted Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey. These are just a few stories of failures mentioned in the Bible. However, the Bible is also the story of how God loves and forgives failures. In this lesson, we will look at the results of failure and recovering from failure.
Discouragement is one of the most effective weapons in the Evil One’s arsenal. Therefore, we need to know how to defeat discouragement. You may be discouraged right now because of some kind of adversity in your life. It may be a health crisis, a marriage crisis, a parental crisis, a financial crisis, a career crisis, or whatever.
All of us have bouts with discouragement. When we are discouraged, we feel like giving up because we are disheartened, dispirited, and defeated. However, the more we try to live for the Lord, the more we will have to battle discouragement because it is the devil’s choice weapon. That’s why, over and over again, we read in the Bible: “Do not be discouraged.” The New Testament uses words and phrases like weary, faint, lose heart, give up, and dismayed to describe discouragement. What wonderful promise about discouragement does God give us in Galatians 6:9?
How much light does a burned-out light bulb produce? None! How much light does a burned-out Christian produce? None! Burnout occurs when we give out more than we take in. In Lesson 11, we talked about stress, and long-term stress results in burnout.
Burnout doesn’t happen overnight. It evolves over a long period of time and often results from making too many commitments. Such a lifestyle works fine for a while, but finally it brings us to the point of exhaustion. We become “zapped.” Our motivation leaves us, and we can’t stand the thought of another obligation or responsibility. In this lesson, we will answer three questions: what is burnout, how do I recognize burnout, and how do I beat burnout.
We live in an angry world where we often see anger revealing itself through rage. There is road rage, cell phone rage, checkout line rage, and “I’ve lost my wife in Wal-Mart” rage. Have you ever suffered from one of these forms of rage? Regardless of the reason for our anger, in a few seconds we can say and do very hurtful things that can destroy a relationship that has taken years to build. We should be very careful about destroying relationships because of what truth in Proverbs 18:19?
That means it is harder to patch up a broken relationship than to capture a fortified city, and arguments separate friends like a gate locked with iron bars. Nothing hurts or destroys more relationships than anger. In this lesson, we will look at three things: the categories of anger, the causes of anger, and the cure for anger, beginning with …
