Growing in Godliness
Instruction in godly living is as vitally important today as it was to the church in Corinth. Because human nature remains the same, we find ourselves facing the same issues and needing the same instruction as the Corinthians did. Our source of power for godly living remains in the Cross and in the power of the Holy Spirit. The motive for our godliness continues to be love, and our goal to glorify God. Diligently study this book and allow the truth to change the way you live.
Preach Christ crucified. Recognize all wisdom and power are found in Jesus. Glorify God in your body and in your spirit. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not give yourself to immorality or sin of any kind.
Cultivating Dynamic Devotion
Devotion to God becomes truly dynamic when the Holy Spirit is allowed free address in our lives to teach us, to give us gifts, and to manifest the presence of the Lord. There is nothing more exciting and wonderfully fulfilling than deeply knowing, loving and experiencing a close, intimate relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Welcome the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in your life. Be sincerely and eagerly available to receive any of the gifts of the Spirit that He would minister through you. Earnestly desire spiritual gifts, keeping your heart available to the Spirit's resources of gifts and power for serving and loving others. Pray with the spirit, and pray with the understanding. Sing with the spirit, and sing with the understanding.
Celebrate the Lord's Supper regularly. Receive His forgiveness, healing, wholeness, and restoration.
Pursuing Holiness
As a believer, we are made righteous and holy in Jesus alone. Righteousness, a term taken from the courts, is God's judicial determination to right every wrong, His gift to the guilty which removes all condemnation and puts them in a state of justification, including full acquittal from all charges against them.
Corinthians tells us that , having been sanctified, we are called to live holy lives. Holy living requires that we rely fully on the Lord's wisdom and not the wisdom of the world. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. We are able to understand the deep things and discern God's ways by the Holy Spirit. Likewise, the Spirit empowers us to live as God's people, holy and set apart to Him.
Put your confidence in Jesus, who has sanctified you. Live your calling as a sanctified one living daily in His holiness. Sanctification is a symbol taken from the temple, showing the need for cleansing from pollution. It includes a renewal by the power of the Holy Spirit, which allows acceptable living before God and points to our ultimate perfection in His presence.
Find true wisdom, power, and holiness in Jesus. Reject living in your own wisdom and ability. The heart of true wisdom is knowing the ways and the will of God, and living in harmony with ultimate created reality. The human wisdom Paul opposes is not intellect or education, but a false independence of God and a bent toward self-sufficiency. God rejects human wisdom because of its pride and self-glory.
The gospel is the revelation of truth, but in the final analysis it is the operation of God's power with victory over sin and death. Redemption, taken from a background of slavery and debt, speaks of freedom and final deliverance from all aspects of sin, including the resurrection of the body. Biblical salvation is nothing short of a complete restoration of the universe, with a new heaven and new earth.
The Walk of Faith
Faith enables us to believe and receive all God has for us as Christians. By faith, walk in the fullness of the gifts and power of the Spirit. By faith, proclaim God's Word without reservation. By faith, dedicate yourself to the work of the Lord.
Boldly preach Christ and Him crucified. This is the simple gospel. Make room for the demonstration of the Spirit and power when you speak or preach. Recognize that kingdom ministry includes signs, wonders, and miracles that demonstrate the power of God.
Keys to Renewing Church Life
While individual relationship with Jesus will always be vital, we must also see ourselves as living members of Christ's body, the church. We must move from individualism and begin again the gathering and function of local congregations and the church as a whole. We have one head who is Christ, and one body, the church. Renew your commitment to the local body of believers. Seek to build up the church through your words, actions, an participation.
Intentionally pursue unity within the body of Christ. Do not give place to divisiveness or competition. Honor others, seek to be like-minded, and recognize Jesus as the common ground for unity. Recognize that division in the church is sin. Turn from jealousy and arguing, which cause division. Seek unity in Jesus.
Understand that the church is the New Testament temple of God. His Spirit dwells in the corporate body, which is composed of many members in whom the Spirit also dwells. Honor all members of the body, rejoice with them in their successes in the Lord, and care for one another. Do not neglect church discipline. Do nothing that will tear down the body, but build on the foundation for Christ Jesus.
Utilize your gifts for the good of the whole body. Seek to use your spiritual gifts to build up the church and glorify Jesus. Let a word in tongues be interpreted, and let mature leaders judge a prophetic word. Do not forbid speaking in tongues; do desire order in their exercise; and do earnestly desire to prophesy.
How to Pray for Your Church
1. Pray for Unity in Jesus for the Church
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17)
2. Pray for God’s Will within the Church
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. (Colossians 1:9-13)
3. Pray for the Holy Spirit to Move in the Church
I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 1:16-20)
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-19)
4. Pray for Fruitfulness for the Church
To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (II Thessalonians 1:11-12)
~Bits and Pieces from study on I Corinthians
