Living the Promises of God
Faith Service Worship Vision
There may be times when you find it difficult to reconcile God’s truth to your own opinion or worldview, God’s truth is eternal, it does not change, our understanding of the truth does change as we allow God to work in our hearts and minds. These sessions are not about opinion, they are about learning truth, the truth contained in the Bible, together we are going to focus on how we apply God’s truth, black & white in a grey world. To set godly priorities, grow in Christian character and live according to God’s standards so that we are a living witness to others. Notes from previous sessions are available from the Bible Study Section of www.ashingdonelim.co.uk.
Session 6
15 February 2011
The Promise of the Gospel If you were shipwrecked on a desert island what three things would you like to have with you? If you could only choose one book of the Bible to take with you which one would it be and why? In this study we’re going to consider the book of Romans, a book that has changed the lives of many people. Martin Luther was a Roman Catholic monk. Luther had tried to get right with God by ritual, by penance, by good deeds, by all of the accoutrements of the church, but his heart was empty. He took a pilgrimage to Rome. In Rome there were some stairs, that by tradition were said to be the stairs that Jesus ascended in Pilate’s judgment hall. Martin Luther went to Rome, got on his knees on the stairs, and on his knees he began to pray on every step, kissing each step as he went up, asking God to bless him, trying to get closer to God. Luther said, “I was no closer to God when I got to the top than I was at the bottom.” His heart was hungry, but Martin Luther had been studying the book of Romans. And Romans 1:17 burst alive in his heart and his mind – ”the just shall live by faith.” And Luther saw justification by faith, the theme of the book of Romans and he was saved, converted, born again. The Protestant Reformation began, there was a Great Awakening, it swept Europe, it swept the world. Augustine was a young college professor who lived a wicked, wild and sexually imoral life, but he had a burden of sin and he tried to alleviate himself of that burden of sin. On one occasion he was in a garden seeking God and he heard a little girl singing a song over a garden wall, a little song, “Take up the Book and Read, take up and read.” He thought, What is this about? He opened the Bible, began to read the Romans 13:13-14, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.“ This verse stabbed him in his heartand he found came to Jesus Christ and became the man the people today call St. Augustine, one of the theologians of the early church. John Wesley was very religious and very motivated, so motivated that he left England and went to America to be a missionary, to convert the American Indians. He went to Georgia, stayed there a while and had a fruitless ministry. He got on a ship to come back home, discouraged, dispirited, feeling a failure, and he met some Moravian missionaries and these Moravian missionaries had the life, the beauty, the joy of Jesus! He knew they had something he didn’t have. He went back to London. There he was at a place called Alders gate. He went to a little meeting, and there they were studying the book of Romans. Wesley said, I went to America to convert the Indians, but who will convert me? He said, I felt my heart strangely warmed and I had the assurance of my salvation. Out of that experience the great Wesleyan Revival began that swept across England.
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