Pondering Knoll: Persevering in this spiritual warfare

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Persevering in this spiritual warfare

Today, my soul was satisfied and my spirit was so lifted up in awe and adoration for my mighty Savior and King. How quickly time flees from us and how aware I am of the dire need to use my time wisely, while I am young, for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. We cannot deny we are in an intense spiritual warfare today, but how encouraging to know there is a way we can persevere through it: to have daily fellowship with God, through the full indwelling of the Holy Spirit, by walking in our human spirit. How wonderful to be lifted up to the heavenly places in fellowship with God! So often I praise and utterly thank the Lord for gifted men who faithfully teach the truth of God's Word these days. For even in this sermon, my spirit testifies to the truth of it, but I would never have been able to put it into words as he has. The teacher today just happened to be my dad :) To God be the glory...

"The Human Spirit" (Part 4) Brent Harris 9/2/12

"But you are not in the flesh but in spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His."
Romans 8:9

“In order to be a disciple we must deny ourselves - this is to exercise authority over our own spirit. We must take up the cross - this is to submit to Christ’s authority. And we must follow - this is continued obedience. This is the road not to confinement, to bondage, to a stunted or arrested development, but to total personal freedom. It means not death but life, not a narrowly circumscribed life but “abundant” life. The gate is narrow but not the life. The gate opens out into largeness of life.”

-Elisabeth Elliot

“No sigh ever reached the Most High, except through Christ—I mean so as to move His heart to pour out His grace. Prayers, groans, tears, all these are like arrows without a bow, till Christ comes and fits them to the string, and shoots them home for you and me. All our prayers are like a victim, with the wood and altar; Christ must bring the fire, and then the sacrifice smokes to heaven. He is the messenger. Oh Christian, do you not rejoice in Him then as the Messenger of the Covenant? He is doing thy errands before the throne tonight, pleading for me, pleading for you."

~C. H. Spurgeon

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Isaiah 40:28-31

"...The central place of faith in Christianity, and its significance...is precisely that which, on man's side, adjusts him to the living and merciful presence and action of a trusted God. In its nature, not by any mere arbitrary arrangement, it is his one possible receptive attitude, that in which he brings nothing, so that he may receive all. Thus "faith" is our side of union with Christ. And thus it is our means of possessing all His benefits, pardon, justification, purification, life, peace, glory."

-Handley Dunelm