Growing in Christ

There are people who are born and brought up in a Christ centered family. Even for those people, there will be a point in life when they need to analyse themselves, repent and accept Christ as their personal saviour.

When you are saved, you will have peace and joy in your heart and your spiritual life will be very joyful. You’ll read the word of God, study it, meditate upon it, pray and have a great communion with God.

As the days goes, God wants to provide you with new knowledge and wisdom about him. So you have to go through tests and He will help you to go through it. With each and every test you pass, you gain new spiritual meanings about the word of God and will get closer with Him.

A student who is in 10^th grade will not study 2^nd grade subjects because he/she had already gone through that grade. Same way when you are developed in Christ, you will no longer be that same born again believer, but will get more meaningful life with respect to the scriptures.

Apostle Paul talks about it as for a baby you cannot give solid food, but only milk. When the baby grows you can give solid food. When you are new to Christ, the evil behaviour inside you may not change. Only your spiritual thought will change, but your character changes as you develop in Christ. For a person to develop in Christ, he/she needs help from other mature believers, same way a plant grows. One person sow the seeds, another water it. In spiritual world, one evangelise about Christ, another teaches you and another may show you to live a life worth as a believer. Even if all these things happen, it’s God’s responsibility to make you grow with respect to the choices he gives you (1 Corinthians 3).

Once you start growing in Christ, accepting tests and overcome it by the help of Jesus, more spiritual maturity and wisdom comes in life. Jesus taught how the commandments given to Israel can be taken serious in a believer’s life.

When you are angry with someone, according to the Bible, you are violating the commandment “You must not murder”. (Mathew 5). In the same way you are violating this commandment when you call someone idiot or curse anyone. Christ teaches us not to burden our heart with anger or jealousy, but to have peace within and out.

When Jesus taught the commandment about adultery, when a man/woman looks at other with lust in their eyes/heart, they have already committed adultery. He even strongly warned them to take off that part, whether your eyes and throw it instead of poisoning the whole body to hell.

People say lies. But some take vows. But when you are a believer of Jesus, you will say “yes I will” or “no I won’t” instead of taking any vow. Christ teaches that any beyond this is evil (Mathew 5: 21-37)

Once you come to Christ, it’s only about salvation. As you grow in Christ, it will be about life and death, blessings and curses and so on.

In short, when you live according to the word of God and in Integrity, without your knowledge God will lift you high and provide you peace, joy and happiness in all situations of life to be an example. May the Lord provide you wisdom to understand this process of growing in Christ and help you to be a part of it and live a testimonial life.

The Rescue

The book of Exodus is the thrilling epic of God’s rescue act. It tells of the redeeming work of a sovereign God. The book gives us the story of Moses, the great hero of God. 

If the book of Genesis is a family history, the book of Exodus is a national history. After Joseph’s death a new dynasty came to the throne in Egypt and the wealth and great numbers of children of Israel made them objects of suspicion in the eyes of the Egyptians. The pharaohs reduced them to a slavery of the worst sort. The people remembered the promises God had given to Abraham and his descendants, and it made this bondage doubly hard to understand (Genesis 12:1-3). 

The story of Exodus is repeated in every soul that seeks deliverance from the enmeshing and enervating influence of the world. The plagues and the negotiations Moses had to make with Pharaoh must have lasted for nearly a year. This gave the children of Israel more time to gather their things. We study Exodus in order to see God’s way of delivering sinful people, and his gracious purposes in rescuing them.

Exodus 12 gives us the thrilling story of Passover, the clearest Old Testament picture of our individual salvation through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. God had sent nine plagues on Egypt in order to make pharaoh willing to let his people go. Finally God said that the firstborn in all Egypt should die. This tenth plague would have fallen on the Israelites too, had they not killed the paschal lamb and been protected by its blood of redemption (Exodus 12: 12, 13). They left Egypt under the blood as marked people. They passed through the Red Sea as a directed determined people. God led them out and shut the door behind them. 

In Exodus 20 to 24, we see the laws given, broken and restored. The law did not make us sin, but it showed us that we are sinners. The physician comes and looks at a child and the symptoms reveal that it is sick. He gives the child some medicine for cure. The doctor did not make the child sick, but he proved that the sickness was there (Galatians 4:4, 5; Romans 8:1-4; 3:19-28).The law is God’s mirror to show us our exceeding sinfulness (Romans 7:12). Before Israel even received the law or started to keep it, they were dancing around the golden calf, and worshipping a god they had made (Exodus 32:1-10,18). 

God told Moses he wished a sanctuary or holy dwelling place that should point to Christ and tell of his person and work. Exodus 25 to 40 gives us the account of building of the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle, having the cloud of glory over it, taught the people that God was dwelling in their midst (Exodus 25:8). Tabernacle was the common center and rallying point that could be moved from time to time. 

Even though God gave his law, the mirror to analyse about them, Israel sinned and can be seen in the history how they got the punishment. But God did not give up on them. As he promised he called them back and now they are a powerful nation. The people who follow Jesus Christ are called New Israelites. Same is applied for New Israel. Whatever blessings God pronounced on Israel will come upon them as well. Of course Law is there. But since Christ obeyed the law faithfully and died for our sins, believing in Christ is the qualification for us to become the New Israel.

May God help you and bless you to be the chosen New Israel through Christ Jesus.