it just makes sense.

Before I came to Orlando, I thought I'd heard it all. I'd been involved with SO many small groups and SO many church events and retreats and friends and... come on, what more could there be to learn?

God has a funny way of answering our questions, even if we don't ask Him directly.

This week, we're learning about Lordship. Our teacher, Ezra, is AWESOME. He's definitely a favourite, though they've all been SO GOOD. We had an excellent class today, and it made me realize even MORE that God really does have it all figured out, and has laid out the ground rules for life. It just so happens that we as humans are pretty terrible at following those rules.

Ezra began by showing us a passage from John 6 - "Jesus answered: I tell you for certain that you won't live unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man. But if you do eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have eternal life, and I will raise you to life on the last day."(53-54) At first read-through, this passage sounds pretty sick. Or, as Ezra would say, "It sounds like a death metal song, man." But then we went through and discussed what the words "eat", "flesh", "drink", and "blood" really mean.

EAT, DRINK = to devour, use up, corrode(eat away gradually by action)
FLESH = human nature(innate temperament)
BLOOD = atonement

SO, what this is saying is that we have to "eat away" and "devour" JESUS' human nature - which isn't like ours at all. It's righteousness. So how do we do that? Galatians 5:22 explains very well what we are to do -- to live out the fruits of the Spirit -- love, peace, joy, kindness, all that good stuff. But if you go back a few verses, Paul very specifically tells us what we should stay away from. This is what we focused on in class today. In the faithful King James version, Paul says:

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."

I don't know about you, but I'd never even heard of variance, emulations, or seditions before. I just learned what lasciviousness meant a couple weeks ago when we watched a video series on relationships. So we spent most of today's class going through each of these "works of the flesh", and it was SO interesting. I was given such a deeper understanding of these things, and perhaps what struck me most was that God knows EXACTLY how He created us and EXACTLY how we tend to operate -- so He told us what we should stay away from to avoid pain and heartache and whatnot. It's not cause He doesn't want us to have any fun... He just doesn't like to see His kids fall down and get hurt. No Father likes to see their child fall down and scrape their knee.

It's about striving for righteousness, my friends.

Something else that impacted me was Proverbs 24:16. It says something like, "though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again.." -- even though we aim to be righteous, we're gonna fall down -- and THAT'S OKAY. God is merciful and faithful and will accept us even after we've fallen down 700000 times. Isn't He awesome?

God is teaching me more than I ever could have imagined. If I've learned anything while I've been in DTS, it's that I will always have more to learn about our amazing God. And that is pretty darn sweet.

Over and out.
LC

p.s. if you want to know more about what we learned(like what lasciviousness means), email me or leave a comment, and I will send you my notes.

p.p.s. I love you all.