Main Nugget
Ceremonial Law
- Understand the ceremonial laws served the purpose to show us that we need a Savior.
- See moving from ceremonial law to spiritual worship as an exchange, not as a change.
- Write the law on our hearts instead of abolishing it.
Sacrifices
- See sacrifice as a gift to bring something of ourselves to give to God.
- Perform sacrifices God’s way, not the way we want to do it.
- Imitate God’s character that the laws show us.
- Realize that the worship was the giving part, not the killing part.
- Understand that the living sacrifice is a continuous 24/7/365/eternity practice
- Understand that living sacrifice (what we do) is equated with spirituality (who we are).
- Offer our bodies as another way of to offer real, continuous, active, voluntary service.
- Offer total sacrifice — mind, body, and soul.
Glossary
Spiritual Worship
- Offer spiritual worship by presenting a continuous offering of a living us — our time, talents, and money. Those mean nothing if we do not offer ourselves — our hearts (Putting Spiritual Worship into Practice).
- Offer spiritual worship with the right motives.
- Sincerely talk to God by using the full range of prayer to build a relationship with our Heavenly Father.
- Have habitual contact with God because we desire to spend time with Him.
- Understand giving God our hearts is spiritual worship.
- Give God the gift of obedience.
- Focus on spiritual worship rather than today’s equivalent (baptism replacing circumcision, being born of Christian parents replacing being born of Jewish parents, doing the law rather than knowing the law, adding laws on things in which God is indifferent, too much emphasis on rituals and not enough on their moral duties of the law).
- Put spiritual worship into practice when we live our lives totally committed to God.
- Grow spiritual worship out of a strong faith.
- Accept God’s offer of salvation so that He can start refining us.
- Take comfort in the fact that God knows we will not be able to be totally pure in this lifetime — we must want to be pure and must be navigating the Sanctification Road so that we are getting closer to being pure.
Glossary
Prayer
- Shows God how much we want for His kingdom to come by consistently communicate Him through prayer.
- Realize prayer is the motivations behind what we say.
- Praise God through prayer.
- Realize withholding our prayers solves nothing because it takes us further away from God.
- Don’t put more emphasis on physical things than spiritual things.
- Follow God’s plan for our lives, not our own.
- Ask God for physical things to support our spiritual growth and ministry.
- Ask God to provide for our physical needs so that Satan won’t tempt us.
- Stop looking only at what we want.
- Become open to seeking God’s Will and find more enjoyment in the lives He wants us to live.
- Pray to God rather do for God — don’t substitute service for submitted living.
- Realize prayer is the key to becoming more like God, not service activities.
- Focus our prayers on praising Him, following His Will, and expanding His kingdom.
Glossary
Sheep, Goats, and Matthew 7: 21 People
- Know we are sinners and only Jesus can save us.
- Realize our #1 priority is getting our relationship right with God.
- Make an inward transformation.
- Have a form of godliness.
- Have as our goal in this life to navigate the Sanctification Road so that we may become like God.
- Don’t not start on the Sanctification Road or skip out halfway through.
- Choose to follow God and repent when we don’t.
- Personally know God by having a close relationship with Him.
- Implement His laws and commandments in our lives exactly as He intends them.
- Deepen our convictions so that the joy bubbles out of us, leading to witnessing and bearing fruit.
- Get a new heart.
- Receive God’s Word with joy.
- Grow our love for God, not just do the do’s and not do the don’ts.
- Endure even when we lose.
- Recognize the similarities between goats and Matthew 7: 21 people — we can’t tell them apart from the outside.
- Don’t be a church member who is missing Jesus.
- Don’t think the the Matthew 25 to-do list brings us salvation.
- Not only believe but also be students who are growing.
- Realize following God and not believing in Him won’t cut it just as believing in God and not following Him won’t.
- Allow belief in our Savior and Redeemer to permeate our being and impact out thoughts and actions.
- Don’t pretend to be religious to exalt ourselves.
- Pursue the path of Light – Jesus.
- Realize there is no guarantee for growth — even for those who have accepted Jesus as our Savior.
- Be outwardly different than the world.
- Don’t judge people as to whether they have made a genuine profession of faith or not but encourage fellow disciples to grow closer to Jesus.
- Realize Satan doesn’t mind if the outward appearance looks like we are disciples as long as our hearts do not follow the same route.
Glossary
Rooted and Planted
- Become rooted so that our love of sin is taken away.
- Realize we are planted in the house of the Lord.
- Become firmly rooted in God by meditating on Christian truth – seeking Him.
Glossary
Walking with God
- Walk with God.
- Be persistent, have determination, and show progress.
Inward Religion
- Understand our relationship with God is a marriage between inward and outward worship with inward religion showing itself in outward religion.
- Determine what our motivation for inward religion is.
- Reach the heart level by having an inward religion that manifests itself into an outward show of repentance.
Outward Religion
- Know that having an outward appearance of being a good Christian isn’t going to cut it.
- Let God permeate every part of our being.
- Don’t have an outward religion that worships having moral character – being a good person — as the end goal.
- Actively seek God – pray and read, listen, and study His Word.
- Don’t perpetuate an outward religion by feeling like we belong, choose our circumstances over God, and take our focus off Him because we think we are experiencing some small run-of-the-mill thing.
- Remember, salvation is an individual relationship with God.
- Not only show worldview people our outward religion, but also show our inward religion shining through us.
God’s Word
- See with the eyes of our hearts so that we have faith in God.
- Read the Bible through in order to know all of Who God is.
- Start seeking God in His Word so that the the Holy Spirit will start interpreting Scriptures for us.
- Read God’s Word because it is a record of Jesus’ ministry.
- Find Jesus throughout the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament.
- Remember, God’s Word is not an exhaustive record.
- Read God’s Word because it gives us the standard by which we will be judged.
- Reading God’s Word isn’t just about knowing about God’s laws. It is about doing them.
- Read God’s Word because Jesus constantly taught out of the Old Testament.
- Don’t read God’s Word to just be reading it.
- Grow through reading God’s Word by getting it to our hearts as we approach it through meekness.
- Accept all of God’s Word.
- Do exactly as His Word says.
- Read God’s Word to be equipped with direction specifically from God.
- Read God’s Word to know how we gain eternal life.
- Search God’s Word to gain knowledge and conviction.
- Read God’s Word to gain access to God’s power.
- Be a full-time student of God’s Word.
- Constantly expectat that we will be learning something.
- Be in God’s Word daily.
- Be willing to be taught as we go along in life regardless of our age, circumstances, and responsibilities.
- Want to read God’s Word.
- Secure God’s Word in our hearts.
- Not only read God’s Word but use it daily.
- Accept God’s Word by faith. Reverently receive it and obey it.
- Receive God’s Word as He intended — the path to our salvation.
- Read God’s Word with the eye of growing in His grace and knowledge.
- Meditate on God’s Word — focus on it.
- Have the wisdom to discern God’s Will in whatever situation in which we find ourselves.
- Search God’s Word so that we can use it as the standard to become holy.
- Be open to being lifelong learners of God’s Word, knowing we are never going to know and understand it all – none of us.
- Know we cannot follow the letter of the law in our inward hearts and the spirit of the law with our outward actions.
- Shoot for God’s conduct and character based on God’s Word and laws.
- Know, when talking about eternal life, the emphasis is not on the eternal part — the quantity part — but on the life part — the quality part
Glossary
Miscellaneous
- Be blameless in God’s sight.
- Love God because of a strong relationship rather than fear Him.
- Don’t confess to God because we only want the fire insurance.
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