Tag: Commitment

Repentance

Living in the Image of God M03S13

Repentance is necessary and sufficient for forgiveness and consists of three ordered steps: (1) recognition that you have sinned, feeling of remorse and personal responsibility for the sin, and recognition of the injured party; (2) commitment to turnaround from the sinful behavior and turn to doing right and just; and (3) confession to the injured party—confess the sin, your personal responsibility, remorse, and commitment to turnaround. God sees repentance as the return of a lost soul and welcomes and forgives the repentant person unconditionally.

Repentance 17:07

Christ teaching in the Parable of the Lost Son provides an understanding of the value of repentance in human relationship with God and his purpose regarding repentance in human interactions and relationships. He explains in the parable that God sees repentance as the return of a lost soul and welcomes and forgives the repentant person unconditionally.

Also, he uses the parable to explain sin as wrongdoing that a person commits against at least one other—the injured party. In that case, repentance requires three actions in order: (1) recognition and remorse, whereby you recognize that you have sinned, feel remorse and accept personal responsibility for the sin, and recognize the injured party; (2) commitment to turnaround from the sinful behavior and turn to doing right and just; and (3) confession to the injured party, whereby you confess the sin, your personal responsibility, remorse, and commitment to turnaround. As we discuss in a previous study under Responding to Sin, Christ explains that the injured party must accept the repentance and forgive the repentant person.

We discuss our understanding of the parable first and conclude the study with a discussion of the parable itself based on the gospel according to Luke [15:11–21].

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Coping with Adversity—Lessons from Hannah and David

The first step in coping with adversity is to commit personally and wholeheartedly to worship and serve God. Resign to his resolution of the adversity, and commit to living in his image, representing him in every human interaction, such that your actions and words radiate Godliness and elicit positive response from others. Furthermore, resigning to the will of God may include applying human effort to accomplish what you can while seeking his intervention. God will intervene to guide us out of adversity but expects us to apply human effort as part of finding the solution. Because the nature and timing of his intervention are generally not known a priori, we have to actively seek solutions at the human level in order to position ourselves to receive and utilize his intervention.

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Samuel handed to Eli
Samuel handed to Eli
Sweet Publishing
FreeBibleImages.org

We continue our study series on Samuel with a study focused on understanding how his mother Hannah coped with the adversity of childlessness. Hannah’s experience leading to the birth of Samuel was dominated initially by her bitterness due to not having a child after several years of marriage. Her husband’s other wife sought to take advantage of her condition. In contrast, her husband was kind and sympathetic and sought to comfort her into accepting barrenness. Hannah, therefore, was alone in seeking a solution to her problem. She dealt with the problem initially by nursing self-directed bitterness that she showed by weeping and often refusing food. However, one day during her family’s annual trip to worship at the tabernacle in Shiloh, she decided she could not continue to bear the problem in her heart. She took the problem to God in prayer and appeared to have left it with him because her demeanor changed completely after the prayer.

We examine her experience in this bible study to understand how she transitioned from wilting under the weight of childlessness to a feeling of being completely relieved of the problem even when there had been no humanly observable change in her situation. Also, we use the opportunity to revisit a previous bible study on David coping with adversity brought on him by virtue of a rebellion led by his son, Absalom. We see that lessons from Hannah’s experience and the lessons from David complement each other and provide useful insight into what a Christian can do to cope with adversity.

From both, we learn about wholehearted commitment to worship and serve God and total resignation to God’s resolution of the adversity in his way and at his time. From Hannah, we learn about living in the image of God as a manifestation of the commitment. And from David, we learn about diligence in human effort while resigned to seeking God’s solution through his intervention.

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Spiritual Commitment and Prayer by Head of Household

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The responsibilities of a head of household include spiritual commitment and prayer on behalf of the household. We can understand this based on interactions among Paul, Silas, the city jailer, and a lady Lydia; in Philippi during the2016-03-13_YouAndYourHousehold Second Missionary Journey. Paul and Silas found themselves in jail, where an act of compassion by Paul touched the jailer spiritually and prepared him to receive the gospel. When he asked what he needed to do to be saved, Paul and Silas advised him to make a spiritual commitment to the Lord Jesus on behalf of himself and his household.

The concept of household spiritual commitment by the head goes back to God’s covenant with Abraham, reiterated to Jacob at Bethel, and renewed at Shechem by Joshua and representatives of all Israel. Furthermore, we learn about prayer by head of household, ministering by compassion, and other principles applicable to present-day human interactions and relationships.

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