Learning and Perseverance for the Purpose of Godliness

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Learning for the Purpose of Godliness

Learning Characterizes the Wise Person

Proverbs 9:9 NASB95
Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser, Teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning.
Proverbs 10:14 NASB95
Wise men store up knowledge, But with the mouth of the foolish, ruin is at hand.
Proverbs 18:15 NASB95
The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, And the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.
Proverbs 23:12 NASB95
Apply your heart to discipline And your ears to words of knowledge.

Fulfilling the Greatest Commandment

Mark 12:30 NASB95
and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’

“We should love God just as much with our mind as with our heart and soul and strength.”

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 276). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

“Unless we love God with a growing mind, we will be Christian versions of the Samaritans to whom Jesus said, ‘You worship what you do not know.’” ().

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 276). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Learning Essential for Increased Godliness

“We will not grow more like Christ if we do not know more about Christ.”

“If you know little about godliness, you will grow little in godliness.”

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 278). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Learning is Mostly by Discipline, Not by Accident

Job 32:9 NASB95
“The abundant in years may not be wise, Nor may elders understand justice.

“Those who are not trying to learn will only get spiritual and biblical knowledge by accident or convenience.”

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 278). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

“The Discipline of learning transforms accidental learners into intentional learners.”

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 279). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Learning in a Variety of Ways

Listening to Bible Teachers and Christian Books

Intentional Conversations with Mature Believers

Church Classes

Reading

Perseverance for the Purpose of Godliness

The Role of the Holy Spirit

“Wherever the Holy Spirit dwells, His presence creates a hunger for holiness.”

“...in the Christian, the Spirit of God begins to carry out the will of God to make the child of God like the Son of God.”

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 291). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

The Holy Spirit works through our works to accomplish His work in us.

The Spiritual Disciplines are the surgical instruments that the Holy Spirit uses to perform Spiritual surgery on the disciple.

Spiritual discipline for the purpose of Godliness is really about applying the disciplines to our lives to more completely surrender our will to the Holy Spirit as He reveals through those disciplines how we may live for His glory.

The Role of Fellowship

“Anyone who measures progress in Christlikeness only in terms of growth in his or her fellowship with God takes an incomplete measurement.”

Luke 2:52 NASB95
And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
1 John 1:3 NASB95
what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 293). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

“Christian fellowship - New Testament koinonia - involves talking about God, the things of God, from a uniquely Christian perspective.”

“J. I. Packer defines fellowship as “a seeking to share in what God has made known of Himself to others, as a means to finding strength, refreshment, and instruction for one’s own soul.’”

Ephesians 4:16 NASB95
from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 295). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

The Role of Struggle

“Advance in the Christian life comes not by the work of the Holy Spirit alone, nor by our work alone, but by our responding to the grace the Holy Spirit initiates and sustains.”
Colossians 1:29 NASB95
For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.
Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p. 297). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

The World, The Flesh and The Devil and how they war against Us.

The World

John 15:18–19 NASB95
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
1 John 2:15 NASB95
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
The Flesh

The Flesh

Galatians 5:17 NASB95
For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.

The Devil

1 Peter 5:8 NASB95
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
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