Through online Bible teacher recruitment, Youth Evangelical Fellowship Africa has been focusing on finding those who are filled with a passion for mission and looking for an opportunity to serve God. One such student is Joshua from Malawi. The student has been studying every day with the YEF Africa leader since last week and has remained consistent in attendance and reflection.
Joshua lives in Lilongwe and studied Theology at his local university. During the Bible studies he testified to the amazing power of the Gospel and expressed how he had not known all these things of the grace of God even though he had studied Romans so many times. Joshua is set to finish Romans 8 this week and begin the Four Spiritual Laws. The YEF Africa leader also plans to encourage him to begin evangelism and spreading the Gospel to those around him. Below are some of his Bible study reflections:
Romans 2:
In today’s study, I feel that God was actually challenging me to change my perception of His mercy and kindness. At times, I’ve been habitually committing some inequities, with the mentality that took His kindness, mercy, and grace, for granted. I have to honestly confess that I’ve been making this mistake for a while now. But God has finally enlightened me through the study of Romans 2, that His judgment is based on justice and truth. Additionally, Romans 2 is a call to obedience to God, by doing what has been stipulated in the Scriptures. As Christians, we have the tendency to learn many things to do with God and the biblical moral standard, but have always fallen short of applying our knowledge to our daily endeavors. This is a very huge problem because we do not project a good image of Christ in us. Consequently, the fallen world can never see the need to follow God.As believers, it is highly required of us to be great teachers of the Bible, by showing a good example of obeying its stipulations. But unfortunately, we preach and teach what we ourselves do not do. We are so double-minded, thereby cheating on God. We lose our focus on our God and are often dragged away from the intended positions by the various winds of this world. This is so heartbreaking in the eyes of God. We need to understand that no matter how good or holy, we may pretend to be, None of our good deeds pays anything if we do not obey the word of God. It is merely null and void, nothing but meaningless.
Nevertheless, “If we consume the things of God, we become more like Christ, and we’ll surely project the character of God in us.” This is what the life of every average Christian should look like. The study addressed me directly, and it was like a flashlight to exposing my weakness in one way, and it challenged me to take a necessary step, on the other hand.
Moving on, I now have it in the palm of my own hand, to always check myself based on the standard of this Scripture, see where I’m still lacking behind, and see the need to pull up my socks. There’s NO MORE PRETENSE here; it will just be a deal of confessing and repenting, off I go.
Romans 1: In today’s study, God was advising me to devote myself wholly, to the act of proclaiming the Gospel without fear of criticism, and without being ashamed of it. I’ve learned from the example of Paul the Apostle, who testified so plainly that he is never embarrassed by the gospel of Christ: for he recognized it (the gospel) as the power of God unto salvation, to everyone that believes; and this is regardless of race, or any distinctions of that nature.
From the look of things, one can easily tell that Apostle Paul was so proud of the gospel, proud of being a Christian, and even of the cross. A closer look at this engrossing issue of the gospel reveals the fact that the gospel is able to solve all our problems, unite us, and even to change/transform us. For this reason, it is the gospel that matters, and nothing else. What a strong claim!
My prayer for today is that may the Lord continue leading and guiding us (His servants) in the ultimate truth and righteousness, to the glory of His holy name.