The 5 Lessons
Introduction
Who are you?
Every important person has a number of wise counsellors to advise him/her on how to be prudent and successful.
Are you not important? (Regardless of the opinion of others!) Should you not also have counsellors?
Imagine having the Living God as your personal counsellor! - Take Him as such.
He will be for you “a Wonderful Counsellor”!
What is more – He will then also be for you…
“Mighty God”,
“Everlasting Father”,
“Prince of Peace”,
- one who establishes this reign of his (in your heart and existence) through justice and truth, - eternally!
Read John14:23, then Isaiah9:6-7
And, what is more, those who submit to his counsel become co-heirs of his kingdom (see Romans8:14-17)
So, who are you?
Introduction
Do you know Him?
Suppose you are without means in life, jobless, hopeless.
And suppose I tell you of my good friend Andries who runs many businesses, who is a very kind person, who is looking for all kinds of people to employ, who pays his people well, who helps them to get well trained, who makes sure that they all enjoy all possible benefits. Suppose every day I extol all his good qualities… What good is that to you if you do not meet this Andries personally, apart from what I am telling you about him?
Suppose you meet a person whose appearance impresses you so much that you admire that person greatly. It might happen that all that admiration of yours fades away as you get to know this person whose true qualities might be very different from what your admiration imagined originally. Knowing a person can change things drastically in your experience!
You can know about a person by hearsay…
You can have an impression of a person from seeing something of his appearance…
But, the only thing meaningful to life in this regard is to know a person (in the fullest sense of the word “know”).
To know a person means to know his heart, to know his mind, to know his ways and to know his plans, through personal experience.
There is one who is called
“wonderful counsellor”,
“mighty God”,
“everlasting father”,
“prince of peace”,
by those who know him.
Who is He?
Do you know Him? Do you to know his heart, do you know his mind, do you know his ways and do you know his plans, through personal experience?
It is possible, you know… See John17:1-3, 1John5:19-21, Philippians3:8-12
Lesson 1
The truth will set you free
Are you free? Are you managing to do what you should or want to do?
or
Are you stuck? Is your life not what it can or should be and you can’t get there?
Test:
Are you satisfied?
Are you fulfilled?
Are you bearing much good fruit?
Are you blessed?
Are you blessing others?
Is “life” flowing from you in healthy streams?
If not, you are stuck: You are being robbed of the opportunity to be like that.
Only the truth can set you free to become like that. It works like this: If you know the truth, it will enable you to know what to do in the situation. Without it, you are stuck with insufficient insight to know what to do.
The truth is very simple:
The truth is the truth. There is only one truth – so it can be known. The truth is ‘that wich cannot be changed’. On the contrary, deceit is many, you can change it any way you like, so it cannot be grasped in full; it only confuses or misleads.
Example:
If the truth is to be told about an incident. There are endless stories that can be made up about what happened so as to deceive and hide away the truth. If you don’t know the truth about what happened, any of these ‘stories’ may seem possible and it will leave you confused and powerless to act appropriately about the incident – or even worse, it can convince you of something but actually leaves you deceived about it. But if you know the truth about what happened, no story about it can deceive you in any way. You see, the truth sets you free from the confusion and lack of power to act appropriately.
So:
If you want to be free in life, decide to live by the truth: Speak the truth in everything, seek the truth in everything – however hard it may seem! - Only the truth can satisfy. Only the truth can provide a solid foundation to build your life on. Any deceit, however wonderful it may seem, will eventually leave you empty and confused. It simply cannot satisfy or produce lasting fruit.
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IF YOU CANNOT BE HONEST WITH ANOTHER PERSON,
HOW CAN YOU BE HONEST WITH GOD?
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Lesson 2
By the sweat of your brow,
you will earn your living
Much of the truth and reality of life is captured in the words of God when He spoke, saying, “By the sweat of your brow, you will earn your living...”
You can respond to this with bitter rebellion (resenting effort, always rather looking for an easy way to obtain what you need or want in life),
Or,
You can respond to this with cheerful submission (embracing this truth, gladly and willingly working hard, doing what you should, finding joy in doing your best to be productive and obtain what you need or want through the effort it requires.)
By rebellion against it, you will live under its curse: Life will always be undesired hard (effort) for you, and because you refuse to submit to the required effort, satisfaction and fulfilment will elude you.
By submission to it, you will live under its promise: “By this ‘sweat of your brow’, you will be satisfied.”
There is no other way to fulfilment in this life than by submission to what is required of you.
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IF YOU CANNOT SUBMIT TO ANOTHER PERSON WHOSE EXPECTATIONS CAN BE MADE CLEAR, HOW CAN YOU SUBMIT TO GOD WHOSE EXPECTATIONS ARE FAR MORE COMPREHENSIVE AND DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?
Lesson 3
It is more blessed to give than to receive
Of this truth of life, Jesus gave the following counsel:
“Walk the extra mile...”
“When you give,
give a full measure and pressed in”
He said: “If someone forces you to carry his belongings for him for one mile, do so by carrying it for him for two miles.” (He was referring to a Roman law which authorised any Roman soldier to demand this service – but only for one mile.)
Following this counsel, you will carry it for one mile, submitting to the force (and the law that made it ‘legal’), but the extra mile you will do as a service, from the heart, because you choose do so.
Through this “more than submission”, through this choice to serve from the heart, the “more to life” is achieved because it is more blessed to give than to receive.
If you can only be satisfied by what you consider justice and by what you can get, you will never be satisfied, forever wanting more. You will also discover that what you can obtain in this way will always be limited. Acting in this way, you can hardly be good company and will therefore have no real place in life.
But, if you start realising the blessedness of serving others from the heart, you will become valuable to them and be appreciated by them. In that is ‘life’. And if you can act in this way even towards those from whom you never get any recognition, knowing your own worth in any way, you will also experience its fulfilment and discover the abundance of opportunity for it.
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IF YOU CANNOT SERVE A DEMANDING PERSON,
HOW CAN YOU SERVE GOD WHOSE DEMANDS ARE ALL CONSUMING?
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Lesson 4
There is no way ahead in life
with unfinished business in the past
Jesus gave the following counsel:
“If you act to serve God, but remember that some person has something against you, go first and be reconciled with that person and then come back and serve God...” (In fact, everything we do in life should be “serving God” by living life the way he expect it according to his design.)
There is no way ahead in life, without fulfilling the condition set by God for life:
“As far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men.”
There are many obstacles which may seem to make this way ahead impossible, but God gave the (only) successful tool to deal with this: “Forgiveness”
If you want to be free in life to proceed: Put right what you have done wrong (if that is by any means possible) and then also (and in any case) give forgiveness and ask for forgiveness.
And if you want to know how, look at Jesus, follow Jesus, be taught by Jesus, grow into Jesus to be one with Him in how He does it.
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IF YOU CANNOT BE RECONCILED TO ANOTHER PERSON WHO IS LIMITED,
HOW CAN YOU BE RECONCILED TO GOD WHO IS LIMITLESS?
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Lesson 5
What do you think
…of yourself?
…of others?
It will be for you as you think. (Matth 8:13)
What makes things “unclean”? (What, to you, is “wrong”? ; What spoils your life?) You will find that it is not what others do (to you) but what you make of it yourself from what is in your heart, which spoils things in your experience.
(Study Matthew 15:1-20)
Do not say: “I am ‘unclean’, that is, I am not as good as others…; I can’t get it right…: There is no place for me in life...”
Do not say: “Other people are ‘unclean’, they spoil my life…; they (or the things) will not change; they don’t care about me; they wouldn’t accept me amongst them.”
Look at your thoughts and you will see, you are the one who paint yourself, others and what is happening ‘unclean’, spoiling them, by what you are thinking about them.
You can also paint it clean:
If it is a problem, think and see and do what can solve it.
If it is good, rejoice in it.
Jesus provided an analogy in this regard: “The lamp of the body is the eye”, he said. (Compare the ability of a blind body to move around and do things to that of a body that sees well.) “The tool for you to manage life is your thoughts”, he means. If you think negatively about the issues you face, life will be dark for you. If then your thoughts (the way you ‘see’ things), which should actually give you strength to face the issues of life, are bad, how great will this darkness be for you!
There is nothing better than finding solutions.
There is nothing better than celebrating good things.
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IF YOU CANNOT SEE PEOPLE FOR WHO THEY ARE,
HOW CAN YOU SEE GOD FOR WHOM HE IS?
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