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

How to Pray - The Object of Our Prayer

In our College & Career Sunday school class this week, we started a series titled, "How to Pray."  I plan to try to and share the lessons each week in case anyone wants to follow along with us here...or you can come join us Sunday mornings at Tabernacle at 10 AM in room 218. Any good speaker, teacher, or presenter knows that the #1 rule of public speaking is to know your audience.  You don't want to prepare a discussion about retirement for preschoolers and a presentation themed with Disney princesses most likely wouldn't spark the interest of a group of businessmen.  In order for someone to prepare a dynamic and engaging presentation, they must know their audience, who they're preparing to talk to. The same is true in our prayer life.  The Point of this week's study is: "A right view of God fuels how we pray."  The conversations we engage in with our friends about are often focused on topics that interest them: their favorite team, favorite ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons in Prayer - 1 Timothy 2:1-8 - Our Attitudes

I'm still working through this same passage on prayer from 1 Timothy and I won't copy all the verses but you can read from the beginning to have a better understanding of the full passage. "...That we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.  This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior." - 1 Timothy 2:2b-3 Paul's plea for Timothy here is for the church to live peaceful and quiet lives.  So how do we do that?  Well the thought of peacefulness is a life that is free from internal disturbances or distractions.  We must first be at peace with ourselves before we can be at peace with others.  A quiet life is one that flows from being peaceful and is a life free from external disturbances and distractions.  Now this does not mean that the church is to just go along with whatever the world says in order to be peaceful.  We are not to waver on biblical truth period.  You won't find true Christian...
Post a Comment
Read more