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Weekly Reminder...
The Weekly Reminder is an informative tool to help people who read it consider what the man of God has said. This weekend’s articles are based on what was heard on May 2 & 3, 2009 in the Westbury assembly.written by Br. Jean Leonidas
It was wonderful last weekend to spend time in the house of God. As Br. Antoine always emphasize, “it is a grace”. God was speaking with His people in telling them to be spiritually minded so that they can obey His commandments and what better way that God can talk to us but by using His minister as an example. Br. Antoine showed us in Romans 7:15-25, how the apostle Paul was in a battle between the law of his members (which is in the flesh) and the law of the mind.
We as Christians are being instructed thru the word of God to obey the commandments. We pray, fast and go to church to learn of the Lord each time our pastor gets up to preach. We learned over the weekend all these things are good to do but the battle still goes on because we all “have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We all are under the same condemnation of death because Paul said “we all died” (spiritually) (2 Corinthians 5:14). Br. Antoine used Paul as a good example because when Paul wrote this epistle, he was in the church serving God; he was doing all the things that needed to be done as a Christian but still the battle was going on. This lesson should show us there is a process that God must bring us thru to help us in our dead state. In our dead state we can only obey the flesh, our decision and frame of mind is always toward evil. What I appreciate more about the message over the weekend is that God is still talking to us. As long as God is still talking there is hope. There was hope for Cain after he gave the wrong sacrifice. When God took time to speak to Cain, God was giving Cain a way to turn and be saved from the spirit or frame of mind that he was in. Saints, God was doing that to us over the weekend by using Br. Antoine.
In Romans 7:21 Paul says “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.” Our flesh is trying to pull us down each time we try to please God. This shows our present state right now while God is processing us for His kingdom to come. Br. Antoine said we must be able to win this battle in order to make it to the kingdom. He said if the apostle Paul as one that God was using is able to make it, we should be able to make it also. He quoted Romans 7:25 where Paul says “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord, So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” Christ is the one that is able to help us because there is no way we are going to win this battle without Christ.
This help can only come from Christ who is the author and the finisher of our faith. Br. Antoine showed us that with the spirit of Christ we are able to implement the commandments of God during this process. He quoted Romans 8:1 where it says “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” This is why the Holy Ghost had to be given to Christ’s disciples when He ascended up high. The disciples had the word after being with Christ for 31/2 years. Romans 8:10 says, “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Saints by knowing our state we are able to seek Christ more and more in order to make the necessary changes in our lives. The apostle Paul did it and this gives us hope that we are also able to do it. May God help us in these final days to realize our need for God’s words and the Holy Ghost.
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written by Br. Samuel Philogene
“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin”(Romans 6:6).
The Christian’s life is a big fight against the world, the Devil and against our flesh. Daily we are facing a battle to remain faithful unto God, to conserve our spirit pure, to live according to the word of God, because the spirit that is leading this present world is everywhere. Every day we have to face the world, where there is only corruption (Psalms 14:1-4), sometimes we even carry this corruptible spirit into our homes; so living for God demands a strong desire to overcome the things of this world, the sins of our society and to live for God no matter what people around us may think. Paul compares the Christian life as a soldier facing death daily (2 Timothy 2:3-7). So overcoming sin requires a strong desire to live for Christ, the recognition of our sinful nature and the necessary effort to change the way we live which sometimes make it easier for the Devil to come and take possession of the house (Ephesians 4:27). It is not just enough to say, “I love God, I want to serve God” but when we say that we have to take the next step which is to make the effort, to cry out unto God and start applying the word of God then God will come and help us to finish the course (2 Chronicles 14:11).
Last weekend Br. Antoine was leading us through Paul’s life and how this dear man of God, loving God with all his heart was in a fight to save his soul. In Romans 7 we saw a defenseless Paul, unable to overcome the flesh, doing what he didn’t want to do. But what touches me more is his desire to change; he knew that something was wrong in his spirit that had to be changed. This is where most of us fail, we don’t recognize when we are wrong, when we are sick to cry out for God’s mercy and forgiveness. Instead, when God uses the man of God to show us our sin and where we need to be corrected we get angry; sometimes we even leave the church. But it wasn’t so for Paul, he knew something had to be changed in his life. We like to sing the song ‘Willing To Be Changed’, Paul was willing to changed, to get rid of the Adamic nature and to put on the new man regenerated by the word of God. He cried out in verse 24- 25 in Romans 7, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” This should be our prayer today, asking God’s help to overcome all sin and to serve the living God.
We shouldn’t feel comfortable in our sinful state; God is here to help and He will do so if only we really want to change. We can see the next step in Paul’s life where he reaches to a point saying that he is not there yet but he’s running toward a goal (Philippians 3:12). He had a vision, we sing a song: ‘without a vision my people perish’, Paul did not perish because he had a vision: to know Christ and to be like Him (Philippians 3:10). As he went further in his march with God, he says in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”. This is not the Paul in Romans 7:15, here we have a man regenerated by the word, washed by the blood of Calvary, walking in the paths of Jesus, having his flesh under subjection (I Corinthians 9:27). Finally in 2 Timothy 4:7 Paul says “I am done”, the work of salvation has been accomplished in my life, now I am like Jesus. O let us seek for God, if Paul made it thru, we can make it. This is what the church stands for, to produce overcomers; it’s an amazing work, people coming from the world with all the sins and evil spirits and being cleansed by the word of God, it’s wonderful. Let us pray and make the effort and God will come and help us to make it thru.
“And they overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony" (Revelation 12:11).
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