Every Thursday 12:30-1:30 pm beginning from Jan. 12 onward (except Feb. 23)
Location: The Nest – Performance Theatre
| DATE | TOPIC | DATE | TOPIC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan. 12 | #1 - God's Plan of Salvation | Mar. 2 | #7 – Prayer |
| Jan. 19 | #2 – Regeneration | Mar. 9 | #8 – The Blood of Christ |
| Jan. 26 | #3 – Baptism | Mar. 16 | #9 – Companions in the Lord |
| Feb. 2 | #4 – The Assurance and Security of Salvation | Mar. 23 | #10 – Witnessing |
| Feb. 9 | #5 – The Mingled Spirit | Mar. 30 | #11 – Meeting |
| Feb. 16 | #6 – Reading the Bible | Apr. 6 | #12 – Conclusion |
| Feb. 23 | None - Mid Term Break |
God desires to express Himself through man (Rom. 8:29). For this purpose, He created man in His own image (Gen. 1:26). Just as a glove is made in the image of a hand to contain a hand, so also man is made in the image of God to contain God. By receiving God as his content, man can express God (2 Cor. 4:7).
To fulfill His plan, God made man as a vessel (Rom. 9:21-24). This vessel has three parts: body, soul, and spirit (1 Thes. 5:23). The body contacts and receives the things of the physical realm. The soul, the mental faculty, contacts and receives the things of the psychological realm. And the human spirit, the innermost part of man, was made to contact and receive God Himself (John 4:24). Man was created not merely to contain food in his stomach, or to contain knowledge in his mind, but to contain God in his spirit (Eph. 5:18).
But before man could receive God as life into his spirit, sin entered into him (Rom. 5:12). Sin deadened his spirit (Eph. 2:1), made him an enemy of God in his mind (Col. 1:21), and transmuted his body into sinful flesh (Gen. 6:3; Rom. 6:12). Thus, sin damaged all three parts of man, alienating him from God. In this condition, man could not receive God.
Nevertheless, man’s fall did not deter God from fulfilling His original plan. In order to accomplish His plan, God first became a man called Jesus Christ (John 1:1, 14). Then Christ died on the cross to redeem man (Eph. 1:7), thus taking away his sin (John 1:29) and bringing him back to God (Eph. 2:13). Finally, in resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) so that He could dispense His unsearchably rich life into man’s spirit (John 20:22; 3:6).
Since Christ has become the life-giving Spirit, man can now receive God’s life into his spirit. The Bible calls this regeneration (1 Pet. 1:3; John 3:3). To receive this life, man needs to repent to God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21; 16:31).
After regeneration, a believer needs to be baptized (Mark 16:16). Then God begins the life-long process of gradually spreading Himself as life from the believer’s spirit into his soul (Eph. 3:17).
This process, called transformation (Rom. 12:2), requires human cooperation (Phil. 2:12). The believer cooperates by allowing the Lord to spread into his soul until all his desires, thoughts, and decisions become one with those of Christ. Finally, at Christ’s return, God will fully saturate the believer’s body with His life. This is called glorification (Phil. 3:21). Thus, instead of being empty and damaged in each part, this man is filled and saturated with the life of God. This is God’s full salvation! Such a man now expresses God, fulfilling God’s plan!
And God said, Let Us make man in Our image and according to Our likeness and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth
~ Genesis 1:26
And do not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and well-pleasing
~ Romans 12:2