Letter 12: The Slow Road

Review:
  • Do you recall the various forms of humor?
  • Anyone know where 'wormwood' comes from? A bitter herb. (Deuteronomy 29:18, Revelation 8:10-11)
Outline:
  • Good progress with patient, but must not rush it.
  • While patient is going away from God, must not allow him to know that.
    • Let him still think of himself as a Christian, but not with dealing with the sin that needs to be brought to the cross. "vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn't been doing very well lately."
  • How to handle the uneasy feeling
    • Too strong and it could wake the patient up.
    • God will probably not allow it to be entirely suppressed.
    • Allow feeling to live, but not flower. Use this as leverage to "increase patient's reluctance to think about the God."
  • Over time, patient will want to avoid God to point that you don't need to keep providing pleasures. Wasting time in things that are of no interest to him (or probably anyone for that matter).
  • Small sins can often do the trick, as they separate the man from God.
Terminology:
  • Revocable - capable of being revoked.
  • Communicant - a church member entitled to receive Communion
  • Roistering - engaging in noisy revelry, carousing
Questions/Discussions:
  • Changes in behavior - ask why those changes?
  • When is the last time anyone asked you how your thought life is?
  • What's the difference between small and big sins?
  • Have you ever wronged some one, or done something stupid and then spent lots of time avoiding dealing with it? Think about how convenient it is at times. This is a tactic of the enemy.
  • "without whom Nothing is strong." might be tied to Philippians 4:13
Scripture:
  • Philippians 4:13 - "I can do all things in him who strengthens me."
  • Romans 7:13-20 - I do not do what I want to do
    • The struggle of flesh/sin with God's will shows the evil of sin.
    • The uselessness of trying to "will" it ourselves.
    • Under law, we are in bondage to sin; we can recognize sin, but we (flesh) can not conquer it.
  • Isaiah 59:1-2 - God's arms are not short, we caused the separation.
  • Hebrews 12:12-14 - 'The holiness without which no one will see the Lord'.

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