During our SBS we do three in the inductive method of bible study:
1. observation (looking at the text)
2. interpretation (figuring out what it meant to the Original Hearers (if it is a narrative) and the Original Readers (OR). This includes looking into historical and cultural information relevant to those groups of people"
3. Application (From figuring out what it meant to the OR, we can discern timeless truths, which we can then apply to our lives)
And this week one of the books we read was 1 Thessalonians. In it there is an amazing passage written by Paul to the Thessalonians: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24, ESV)
And I was just amazed at the faithfulness of God, so I chose to take some time (definitely not enough time) to just look back at my life, specifically in my journals, and see the ways that God had shown up and was faithful to help me when I was struggling or when my friends were struggling. Here are some of the highlights, mostly just from my first year of following God! There are so many more things that have happened, I doubt anyone would have the time to read them all at once, so here are a few:
-After getting baptized and saying I
believed in Jesus, I tangibly experienced the unconditional love of
God. It was an amazing experience and I drove home laughing and full
of joy.
-During my early days of following Jesus
I prayed that God would help me be reconciled with a certain friend.
The following day, our relationship was much better, and I even said
I was sorry for treating him wrong, he said he was sorry for treating
me the way he did and we were reconciled.
-I prayed that God would allow me to get
to know a certain girl even more, and then next few months I enjoyed
an incredible friendship with her as we sought after God together.
Then, after experiencing some pain as we weren't very good friends
for different reasons, we were also separated a little as friends. But I had my relationship with Jesus to lean into,
and oftentimes when I prayed I would experience the tangible presence
of God and could feel him speaking to me, and in the loss of other friends I experienced a greater friendship with Jesus than anyone else in my entire life. Then, after about 2 years of not really talking to this friend, I started praying for her that she would decide to follow God and that we would be friends again, and I just talked to her 2 months ago and she is full throttle after Jesus and is going to do her DTS in Switzerland later this year. Praise God!
-I would constantly receive strength
from the Lord, whenever I was worried, anxious, sad, depressed, which
happened almost everyday I could run to God and find all I needed
through prayer with him. Just knowing that He was with me gave me
such peace and comfort, I had a journal full of my prayers, thanksgiving and worries, and it was the knowledge that God was listening and actually doing something about it that gave me so much peace. More specifically, after coming home from a difficult and discouraging day at school, I asked my mom to pray for me because I was depressed, and within 5 seconds of her praying I was immediately overcome with an incredible sensation of feeling God's love and joy and his affirmation in my life. It was incredible, and so encouraging that God would let me feel His presence in such a tangible way.
-On a back packing trip I first felt as
though I “heard the voice of God.” It was really an amazing
experience, where we were told by our leaders to just start reading
the gospel of John as we went on by ourselves for about 20 hours.
While on my own, I felt the Lord speaking to me about the upcoming
year and my need to be freed from the fear of man so that I could
actually obey him properly. While it was nothing spectacular, I certainly remember feeling that there was a loving, gentle voice telling me to do something that was so beneficial in my life. Also, while reading the book of John, I
felt Him speaking to me through the words of the eyewitness account
about Him, and I felt as though I really knew Him as a person and as
a friend.
-I
remember I saw an amazing answered prayer in my life! There was this
amazing youth group retreat with the middle schoolers, and I had been
praying for Aiko Tasaki. She is a sweet girl that had a very tender
heart towards the Lord. I remember writing in my journal something
like, I pray that she just gets rocked by your incredible love God,
and it totally happened: She was wondering why she was going through
so many hard times, and me and some friends prayed and felt to say to
her 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, saying that we are comforted in our
afflictions so that we may comfort others, and that God calls us to die to ourselves so that in that dying we can be full of His Spirit and joy as we forget about ourselves and love others. As we talked about that
and prayed, she had an amazing encounter with the Holy Spirit and
started laughing and being filled with joy! There was also another
young man who people had been praying for that gave his life to the
Lord that same weekend. Tanner Nielsen gave his life to Jesus after encountering the presence of God in a worship time. Wow Wow Wow that was an
amazing weekend!
-While I had begun following God January 2009 mostly
because of the good, amazing emotions that were a result of my
relationship with God, the good emotions eventually weren't as consistent and I realized I couldn't cling to my own joy as the undeniable proof of God's existence, both for myself and for others. I
remember in January-February 2010 I wondered many times why I was so
depressed and felt very angry at God. I even remember one day at school I heard voice in my head saying, "There is no god" "its not worth it" "give up." It was during that time that
realized I needed to have faith in more than my own subjective
feelings. I read a book called “The Case for Christ,” written by Lee Strobell, an atheist who set out to disprove Christianity. The funny thing is that while he setting out to disprove it, he became more and more convinced himself that Jesus was who he said he was. I read that book and saw that
Jesus was a real man that walked the earth and claimed to be the Son
of the God described in the Jewish OT (Old Testament) There were many
OT prophesies fulfilled in Christ, like the place (Micah
5:2, ESV) and the nature (Isaiah 7:14) of his birth, and the
nature of his death, (Isaiah 53 and Psalms 22). Jesus actually
claimed to be God, the same one that was eternal with no beginning and who created the earth, so he was either crazy, a liar or telling the
truth. Just like Lee Strobel I came to believe that he was telling the truth. Since then I
have wondered and asked questions about God, even wondering about
Mormonism, buddhism, or Islam, but every time I ask questions God
keeps proving Himself faithful in being able to answer all of my
questions, and he keeps showing me that He is who he says he is, just as his people recorded in the bible. He is so amazing!
