Skip to main content

VOD - Titus 2:11-12

"For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.  It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age." - Titus 2:11-12

These verses are pretty straight-forward to me and I'm glad that God put some simple ones in the Bible so I could understand them.  Let's just walk thru these though.

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people:  God is offering salvation and forgiveness to everyone.  It's not for a select few, anyone can accept this gift.  And he is just offering it, we receive it by His mercy.  There's not a checklist of tasks that we must perform in order to be saved, it's all about believing in Him.

It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions:  As Christians, we are called to be Christ-like, to be more like God.  Sometimes I think people want to overcomplicate things but if we would just exhibit the fruits of the spirit (Galations 5:22-23); love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control we can make it pretty simple.  The Holy Spirit gives us the strength to say no to worldly passions.  Temptation is not a sin, giving in to temptation is a sin.  Jesus lived a sinless life and he was tempted by Satan but resisted in Matthew 4.

And live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age:  Self-control and self-discipline to me go hand in hand.  It's not easy to keep our temper in check all the time and fight anger, or to keep from spreading the latest gossip we heard even if we don't know it to be true but we are called to be disciplined and do so.  Thought this letter to Titus was written about AD 64, God's offer of salvation still stands today.  It's still available for us to accept it and we are still called to live godly lives, now more than possibly ever before in this country.

The Bible and Christianity can be studied very deeply into theological and other study areas.  But sometimes it's good to just get a short, simple, straight-forward message and I think that's what we got right here in Titus.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2020 is Hindsight...Finally!

Wow, what a year! 2020 could literally be an entire decade, maybe more, of history, change, and lessons rolled up into these twelve months. While many aspects of 2020 were kind of sucky and we would like to forget them, it will certainly be a year to remember. And it will be enlightening when this year is looked back on in 10, 25, or 50 years to be discussed. I wonder if we'll seem like geniuses or idiots? Probably both to some extent! While there is so much that I could consider and analyze about this year, I'll try to break some of it down into four dimensions - Physical, Spiritual, Mental, and Social/Emotional. These are events and happenings from my world and perspective and I'm trying to be open in sharing and would love to hear from others on events you found most transforming. Physical When COVID cause gyms to close, that messed me up. Our town and state were late to be hit with severe cases and therefore later than many across the country to close up shop. I'm n...
Post a Comment
Read more

Worship > Fellowship

I believe that worship, true worship of God, is more important than fellowship with other believers.  Now I'm not saying that fellowship and relationships aren't important.  But I am saying that if I'm not worshiping God, if I'm not right with him, then my other relationships can't be right.  My fellowship and worship with him is more important than my relationship with my wife, my son, family, friends, my church, and my community.  Think about it.  How can I love my wife like Christ loved the church if I don't love Christ?  I wouldn't know how to love without knowing him.  Why should she submit to me if I'm not worth submitting to?  And yes I do believes wives should submit, but I also believe that won't be an issue as long as she's submitting to a godly husband.  (Ephesians 5:22-25) Our love for others must flow from our love and worship of God.  1 John 4:19-21 reads, "We love because he first loved us.  If anyone says,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Do You Need Revival?

"Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in You?" - Psalm 85:6 The thoughts below were in my devotional this morning by Dr. Lee Sheppard: "So how can we know if we need revival in our lives?  Well, we need revival when our salvation has lost its joy, when our sin does not break our heart, and when we make little to no effort to witness to the lost.  We need revival when worship becomes boring, when we are at odds with believers and see no need for reconciliation, and when we fail to believe God for the impossible.  We need revival when we have to be begged to give and serve in church and when we would rather make money than give money.  We need revival when we have to be entertained to be drawn to church and when we are indifferent to the fact that there are 2.5 billion people on the planet who have never heard the name of Jesus.  We need revival when we don't regularly see the supernatural evidence of God's power and when ...
Post a Comment
Read more