October 12, 2010

Sorry guys, this is halfway through the lecture. This is my interpretation of what I understand and have learned about God today. I will post all my notes for you to understand and learn with me. Love you all.

The enemy was attacking the identity of Christ. He attacks our identity and makes us question it. This can make us feel like if we can’t prove we are a child of God we are not. We are never going to be able to prove it, because we are. We try to live in a way to reflect the love of our parents and that we live in a way that our lives bring joy to the heart of our parents. It takes the pressure of us having to prove we are a Christian away. We are continuing to examine out lives by trying to prove it and God didn’t ask that. If we accept it, it will bring strength, joy and knowledge. We have to see if our walk is bringing joy to God and is showing God. We don’t have to earn God, He is already ours to have. We don’t have to earn our identity either; our identity is in Christ who is already ours. So our identity is already ours. We think our actions give us our identity which makes us frustrated and confused and is not what God tells us. Our life with God is not a religion.
The second temptation there was not a lie but there was deceit. If Jesus fell into the trap He could of fallen into sin, but he closed that door.
The third temptation was for Jesus to worship Satan for giving him all the kingdoms of the world. God came to save us, redeem us and show us God’s purpose and plan. Jesus took everything under the obedience of God. In the meantime all the kingdoms belonged to God because Jesus on the cross won it over and brought it under God’s authority. This was the beginning of the ministry of Christ. Satan offered Christ everything so that we wouldn’t have to die. He offered that he would give it freely if Christ would worship him. The kingdoms wouldn’t belong to God if this happened because Jesus would have broken His bond of God and what He wants. Satan always shows us the short way of getting somewhere because the goal of our life is the realization of a thing and we don’t have an issue with taking short cuts. Gods goal is to do God’s will IN THE WAY AND TIME OF GOD. The goal is not what is important for God, it is for us to do it His way. Because of Satan’s lie we do everything for the goal and not in the way of God. When we reach goals by the short way, it has no power to strengthen our life and it doesn’t have impact on the world and we have emptiness and we don’t find what was supposed to be there. This is because we went in our own way and not God’s way. Therefore it is no longer the work of God. If we follow God’s way it is blessed and we can see it. If not, we live for those goals instead of living for God. By doing this we took it out of God and used it for ourselves. Obey God and see life through the eyes of God. Eve’s desire was to be like God, and Satan took this goal and gave her a short cut which led to destruction. She took God’s plan and did it her way and took the short way and the simple way. It is only complicated to hear the voice of God when we have deceit and we don’t always know when we have deceit in our lives. The final goal of our life is to be with God. Satan says to us “Here, I will give it to you now if you just do this one thing. You can have it for free and you don’t have to go to the cross for it (metaphorically).” What is your goal? We are committed to Jesus Christ and He should be our goal. Commitment is for our whole life. We are in it forever.