Developing Intimacy With God - 6. The Bible Helps Equip You To Serve God

Developing Intimacy With God
6. The Bible Helps Equip You To Serve God
One of the main ways that the Bible helps you, is by equipping you for active service! There are at least four ways, in which the Bible does this in your Christian life!Firstly, the Bible also equips you for doing battle with Satan and resisting temptation. Paul likened this believers’ spiritual armour to that used by Roman foot soldiers (Ephesians 6:11-17). In Paul’s pen-picture here, the Bible is compared to a soldier’s sword. A sword is not only used to defend, but also used to attack. Jesus defended Himself from satan’s attack by using Scripture to show the devil how wrong he was (Matthew 4:3-4).Secondly, is that the Bible equips, and is useful for, evangelism and pointing others to Jesus Christ. In Acts 8 we read that the Ethiopian was puzzled by Isaiah 53. It was in explaining about that, that Philip could talk to him about Jesus Christ and bring him to faith. (It is also thought by some that he was responsible for starting the Christian church in Ethiopia which continues to this day).Thirdly, the Bible equips you as a Christian to use your spiritual gifts. Paul talked often about them and one list is in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11. A spiritual gift is an ability given by the Holy Spirit, to you the believer, so that the church is encouraged and God is glorified. Your spiritual maturity derives from building Bible knowledge, which in turn helps you use your talents in the best way possible to serve God and other people.Finally, the Bible equips you in order that you may give counsel to others seeking help. An example is seen in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 where Paul urges Timothy to use Scripture when teaching others.As you read your Bible regularly, ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate it to you! You will start growing in spiritual maturity. As you do, and as you use these methods living the Christian life, you will grow into spiritual maturity.
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Developing Intimacy With God - 5. Keys To Understanding The Bible

Developing Intimacy With God
5. Keys To Understanding The Bible
You may well be asking a particular question by now. Just how does God the Holy Spirit illuminate the Bible to you. What is it that the Holy Spirit uses to help make the Bible easier to understand? The answer is prayer. Pray and ask that the Holy Spirit will help you as you read. That is a major part of his role in your life as a believer. He will use the Bible to enlighten and illuminate your mind, heart and will as you seek to be obedient to the Lord.Remember the Bible is inerrant and infallible. That is, it does not mislead in matters of faith and practice. It does not contain errors or mistakes in its original form. It is the Bible that God intended us to have. God speaks through it so it is totally trustworthy. That statement strictly speaking, only applies to the original manuscripts and languages. Because of that, we are to maintain the Bible as our final authority over all things. We can do this because if any part of the Bible appears to contradict another part, there must be a meaning in the contradiction - even if we find it difficult! The Bible is a balanced and unified message from a God who does not change. By reading the Bible regularly, you will be see how it holds together. I would recommend reading it daily, perhaps first thing in the morning to help your day start off well. As you read, it is a good practise to always ask yourself questions about the Bible passage you are reading. Use a good set of daily devotional studies! There are many available for you and your own taste. Use a Bible you can read easily. There are many translations available to suit your taste and style of reading.Finally, expect to be changed when reading the Bible with an obedient heart, mind and will. The Bible is God’s Written Word because it is active, and God will not cease transforming you into the image of Jesus the Living Word. 
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Developing Intimacy With God - 4. The God Who Speaks - Illumination

Developing Intimacy With God
4. God Speaks By Illumination
 
God has spoken and he has communicated his Written Word to us. Firstly, by revelation when God spoke to the writers. Secondly, through inspiration as the writers were divinely guided by God, in the process of writing his message. However, to understand God’s revealed and inspired message, illumination is required. This is where God causes the Bible to be understood by both the human heart and the mind. Why do we need illumination? Without illumination, the reader is blinded both by their own nature and by satan. Just as a light bulb needs power to give light, so the Bible needs somebody to provide the power! The person, who does this illuminating, is God the Holy Spirit. He was promised by Jesus to illuminate the Bible to the hearts and minds of all those people willing to listen, both Christian and non-Christian. Take for example the event recorded for us in Acts 2. This is where the Holy Spirit uses God’s Word to illuminate sinners at Pentecost, where after hearing Peter preach, over three thousand people became Christians (Acts 2:41).
40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ 41 Those who accepted his message were baptised, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. (Acts 2:40-41)
Even as a Christian you need this illumination to help you understand God’s Word. The Holy Spirit will show amazing truths to you as you read the Bible regularly, and ask for his help in understanding it. God’s Living Word Jesus Christ is revealed as the Holy Spirit illuminates the Bible as God’s inspired written word. That way people’s lives are transformed and changed.
So, why not pray for his help whenever you read the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate it to you?
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Developing Intimacy With God - 3. The God Who Speaks - Inspiration

Developing Intimacy With God
3. God Speaks By Inspiration
The actual word ‘inspiration’ is found only once in the New Testament, when Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16 explicitly states, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” or more literally “is God-breathed.” The word ‘inspiration’ is in fact, not a good translation. The original Greek word says that God ‘breathed out’ his Word. Divine inspiration naturally proceeds from divine revelation. We looked at revelation last week.While through revelation God speaks to humanity, it is by inspiration that God works the pen, ergo ensuring that the message is God breathed and written correctly. This process of inspiration has several theories attached to it. One theory called the content theory, suggests that the author was given the main idea by God, but God allowed the writer to choose his own words. Another is the natural theory. This is where the Biblical writers were inspired in the same sense Shakespeare was inspired, but that doesn’t agree with the ‘God-breathed’ word. It is quite apparent that God did not suppress the writers’ personalities. For example, the writing style of John is clearly different from that of Peter or indeed that of Paul. The differences in writing style and in vocabulary of different authors are easily seen. However, Jesus implied clearly that God chose the very letters of the words when he said that not one stroke of the pen would pass from the law (Matthew 5:17-19). From this we can infer that God inspires all the words of the Bible. God wanted to communicate to ordinary people, therefore he used ordinary people to write and produce the Bible. In response to temptation by satan, Jesus said that humanity is to live by God-inspired words. (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10) Writers in the Bible, such as Peter, knew their writings were being guided by God (1 Peter 1:10–12; 2 Peter 1:19, 20; 3:15, 16).Inspiration, is only guaranteed in the original manuscripts which were written in Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. It is not, however much some people protest, guaranteed in any translation of the Bible.  
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Developing Intimacy With God - 2. The God Who Speaks - Revelation

Developing Intimacy With God
2. God Speaks By Revelation
"Then the LORD replied: ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that whoever reads it may run with it." (Habakkuk 2:2 New International Version)
Last time we looked at the God who speaks and a reason why we should develop our intimacy with Him. He is a God of love and to hear him speak we need to read and understand the Bible. We continue with that today, by looking at the first of 3 words which describe what we mean when we say that God has spoken. The word for today is “revelation”. The Bible, as God’s written word, is revelation. Revelation is how God has communicated truths to people, who otherwise would not know them. The story of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is a good example of this. As humanity was not created until the sixth day, it must have been God who revealed the knowledge about what occurred on the first five days to the author of Genesis, or it would not be possible to know what occurred. We know God spoke to those who wrote the Bible; but how did he speak? Was it in Hebrew? Or Greek? Or some form of angelic language? We do know that God spoke to them in their own language, just as he did to young Samuel in the temple. Samuel at first thought that the voice was that of Eli the priest. (1 Samuel 3:3–9) At other times God spoke through angels, as when the angel Gabriel informed Mary that she would give birth to Jesus. (Luke 1:26–38) In the part of the Bible we call the Old Testament, God often spoke through the “Angel of the Lord”. Some people believe this to have been Jesus before he came to earth as a human (Joshua 5:13–15; 1 Chronicles 21:16). We call those events, a ‘christophany’ – a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus the Son of God. Another method of communication used by God, is in dreams and visions. An example of this is in the birth story of Jesus Christ, where the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to King Herod. (Matthew 2:12). God has also communicated from a burning bush (Exodus 3) and from within a cloud (Exodus 34). God has even spoken through a donkey, as the prophet Balaam can testify (Numbers 22). Without revelation, we could not learn about God. Unless God reveals Himself, we would not know anything about him. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 states, “He (God) has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” We know for certain that this revelation has caused the Bible, the Written Word of God, to reveal Jesus Christ the Living Word of God. WOW! Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file
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Developing Intimacy With God - 1. The God Who Speaks

Developing Intimacy With God
1. The God Who Speaks
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” 1 John 4:16
Today we are starting a new series where we will seek to help our relationship with God, to develop our intimacy with Him. We will start with 8 studies about reading and understanding the Bible, where God speaks to us. Then we will go on to prayer, where we speak to God but He also, again, speaks to us. We start today by looking at the God who speaks and the basis on which we are to develop our relationship with Him through reading the Bible and praying to Him, listening to Him. Let me know what you think! I won't mind what you say...
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Jesus Who - Pulp Theology 09

PulpTheology Books
Jesus Who?
This book is free on Kindle March 15th to March 20th, 2023...
The title "Jesus Who?" was a question put to me by my father many years ago. He was asking me which Jesus I was talking about. The Jesus of Islam? The Jesus of the Anglicans or the Jesus of the Baptists? The Jesus of the imagination?In this little book, we look at who I think Jesus was and is... It acts as a brief introduction to the greatest man who ever lived: Jesus Christ. Who was he? Why does he matter? What has he got to do with each of us? Jesus Christ. The name which is on everybody's lips at Christmas. But who was this man and so what? When the human we know as Jesus Christ was born, his name imbued the very reason he was born. His conception and birth were extraordinary at every level. Jesus very name, means “one who saves” and the entirety of his birth, life and death were centred on this very role. His role was to save all those who would follow Him.Almost everyone has an opinion about Him. Jesus was born to confirm God's promises, to reveal God as a loving Father, invite people into His Sonship, and to be our representative before Almighty God. He gave us an example of how to live a holy life to the full. Jesus was not merely a man who received some special power, nor was he some strange creation that was half man and half God. As we will see together inside, He was much more than those ideas.
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Pulp Theology 01 - A Glimpse Of God

PulpTheology Book
A Glimpse of God
The WOWFactor of Jesus Christ! It’s all there in black and white. To be agog is to be filled with excitement and expectation! Hence our title of this book exploring the man who splits history - Jesus Christ! Looking primarily at what the Bible says about him but also glimpsing briefly at the evidence from outside the Bible said about this most amazing of men! His birth we celebrate worldwide at Christmas and his death & resurrection we celebrate at Easter.
 
For many people today, as well as down through history, Jesus Christ is the most important figure in human history. Almost everybody has an opinion about him - whether positive, negative or indifferent. Come inside and let us explore together the primary documents about him, the Bible, who people say he was, what he did and the relevancy of Jesus Christ for you today! Suitable for those exploring Christianity as well as those who have been a Christian for a short while or for many years! come inside this book and find out more about this amazing God-man - Jesus Christ.
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Pulp Theology Book 10 - An Ambassador in God’s Orchestra of Joy

PulpTheology Book
An Ambassador in God's Orchestra of Joy
An Ambassador is an official and accredited representative of their own sovereign state to another place or country. The Ambassador speaks not for themselves but represents the ideals, thoughts and actions of the one who sent them and with their authority.All Christians, as Disciples of Jesus Christ, are Ambassadors for Jesus Christ into the world in which we live. Therefore throughout this book, we use both words, Ambassador and Disciple, in relation to the Christian. As Ambassadors for Jesus Christ, we are to be His representatives here on earth. We are His Church, which is an Orchestra of Joy.The Christian Ambassador has a joyous message to present to people about how people can be reconciled with God. A message to all people, of all nations, of all time, without favouritism or corruption. As Christian Ambassadors, we are sent by our Lord Jesus Christ, into the world, in order to live our lives for Him and Him alone. Inside this book, we look at 6 main characteristics of the life of the Christian Ambassador: 1. The Ambassador's Identification // 2. The Ambassador's Message
3. The Ambassador’s New Life // 4. The Ambassador's Serving Life
5. The Ambassador’s Devotional Life // 6. The Ambassador's Uncompromising Life The Disciple of Jesus Christ, the Christian, is God's Ambassador, as exhorted by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:20-21:
20 We are therefore Christ’s Ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God. 21 God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
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Romans An Introduction - Partakers Bible Thought

Introducing the book of Romans
 
This is a part of our series, "Exploring the Bible", which comes from our book "Exploring the Bible" which is available on Amazon by clicking here or visiting PulpTheology.com
Key Verses:
Romans 1:16-17 / Romans 3:23
Paul’s letter to the Romans explains what God has done, presenting God's plan of salvation, which is in Jesus Christ, and the effect this has upon all mankind. This gospel plan sees God's righteousness extended to all of mankind based on Jesus Christ’ work on the cross. It is received by faith in Him, rather than the good works of man. It investigates ideas such as guilt, faith, assurance, security and sanctification.
Paul is very concerned that there should not be any conflict between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in Rome. So he explains very carefully how it is that everyone, although basically a sinner, can be accepted by God. That acceptance, called righteousness, can only be gained by belief in and commitment to Jesus and his atoning death on the Cross. He then explains how this leads to the gift of the Spirit and the ability to live a life worthy of a follower of the Lord.
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