LEARNING DAILY

 

2 Corinthians 3:18, And all of us have had the veil removed so that we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord. And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like Him and reflect His glory even more. (New Living Translation)

 

I have mentioned before that the best way to recognize anything that is counterfeit (such as a twenty-dollar bill of a false prophet) is to study the real or authentic article or true prophet of God. There is only one original; the fakes come in all shapes and forms. By studying the original we can recognize and reject the imposters (thoughts from the DJSB). There are plenty of people that are fake in our would today. You and I must be diligent in studying God’s Word to fill our minds and hearts with the One True God, His Son, and the Holy Spirit; as we do, recognizing those who are distorting His Word will be revealed to us.

 

There is another aspect of this that has become very important to me. Studying God’s Word, time spent in prayer, experiencing His closeness and remembering the many times I have experienced His direction, protection, and healing result in being transformed into His likeness. Don’t miss or misunderstand what I am saying here. When you spend a lot of time with someone you tend to become like that person and reflect who they are. For example, I studied one of my coach’s behaviors and much of how I taught and coached was a reflection of him. I studied some of my peers as they taught and tried to emulate some of the ways they did things. And, it is funny how I add some of the phrases of my wife in my conversations. Do you get the picture? You know who you reflect, right?

 

Here’s the thing that is important today. The time you spend with Jesus should be changing you into His likeness and image – what you look at, what you think about and what you reflect to others. The more time you spend with Him, the more light you reflect, a little more of Jesus is shown by the way you live and talk. Right now. our transformation is continual and, at best, partial. But Paul is telling us in the verse above that the more time we spend with Him, the more we become like Him.

 

Every day there is spiritual war being waged within each of us; it is a tug-o-war so to speak. It involves the Spirit versus our flesh. Paul calls it the old man versus the new man, the Spirit led man. The role of the Holy Spirit is to reproduce the life of Christ in each of His followers. We cannot do it on our own, we are not capable of doing so, 2 Corinthians 3:5 reminds us of that, “It is not that we think we can do anything of lasting value by ourselves. Our only power and success come from God” (NLT). The promise of God’s Word is that a day is coming for each of us when will see Christ face to face; then our transformation will be complete and we will be like Him. Until that time, be diligent in the time you spend with Him in Bible study and prayer in order to walk the narrow way to His kingdom, allowing it to change you into His likeness so all will see you are His child. “So let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16.  

 

From now on DJSB will be used to note information or quotes from the David Jeremiah Study Bible and LSSB will refer to information and quotes from the Life in the Spirit Study Bible.  I have added Jimmy Swaggart’s Expositor’s Study Bible to be referred to from now on as JSESB.