Last night we had our small group meeting – we have been going through Philippians, we spent a lot of time on Phil 1:9 – “it is my paryer that you love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment.”
Paul prays for the church to have a particular kind of love – one that abounds more and more with knowledge. He wants his people to get it. To understand life from a Biblical perspective.
I was drawn to Paul David Tripp and his comments on this passage as it relates to a Biblically informed perspective on life in his great book “Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands.”
The gospel gives us three essential perspectives on the human struggle. Without an awareness of these perspectives, life will make now sense or it will be understood unbiblically, and therefore incorrectly. The gospel gives us a true sense of self, of God, and of process.
- Sense of Self – do we look at life thru a proper, biblical perspective of who we are in Christ? How God the Father sees us as righteous, holy, blameless and loved dearly in Christ Jesus? Are we aware of our sin nature that wages war against our souls? Are we are of our need to live out the gospel daily? To preach the gospel to ourselves and repent and daily realize where our sin is – on the blood-soaked cross and forgiven and intentionally not remembered by God?
- Sense of God – do we have a Biblical understanding of who God is? Do we seek to know his attributes more? Are we growing in our understanding of who he is? Heck, have we read the whole Bible and sought to understand God more and his story of redemption and how he works? Check out stuff by Pink, Tozer, or Packer…
- Sense of Process – do we understand that if we have the faith that Jesus was the Messiah, the chosen sacrifice for our sins and that his life and sacrifice were credited to us in order to reconcile us to God – that we are justified before God and now we are being sanctified before God. That “normal life” is one which struggles exist and the very “relationships with which I struggle and the difficult situations from which I would like to escape are the instruments he is using to produce the heart change that will result in a life that is fruitful to his glory?”
Mike Ruel 