Queen's Road Cell

I started by saying that we often associate what is 'personal' (e.g."personal matter", "personal reasons") with 'what is nobody else's business but mine'. And so what is 'personal' is often that which is not under scrutiny by others, that which we feel we have no need to be accountable to others for. As I prepared this study I found many times when I caught myself many times thinking in this way. But the goal of this study is to show to us how we must surrender every part of our actions and thoughts to God. Every part of us is accountable to Him and comes under His direction. I Co 6:12-20 gives us the Biblical foundation of why we are to surrender our bodies to God's control: 1. The body is meant for the Lord, and the Lord for the body (v.13), i.e. the purpose of the body is to glorify God, and the Lord is pleased with, affirms the value of and purposes good for the body. 2. The body will be raised from death. In heaven we will be...

Today Joshua semi-led the cell. I had thought my oral surgery today would incapacitate me but it turned out not to be the case :) We first mentioned how when faced with morally ambiguous choices we need to have a body of life experience and Scriptural knowledge that we can quickly and automatically draw on so that we can make right decisions. This is the equivalent of being spiritually wise. The author of the book "The DNA of D6) calls this a "biblical worldview" -  "the unconscious intellectual ability to make decisions, render value judgements,  and form opinions from Scripture without deliberation", a "second-nature way" of responding. Grace then shared about her experience encountering a sense of spiritual discomfort during her recent homestay in Vietnam. This then led to discussion on demonic/Satanic influence on Christians, where we said that Christians can be influenced or deceived (Peter in Mt 16:23, Ananias and Sapphira in Ac 5:3) or oppr...

We began by asking whether it was justifiable for the author of the study to use this event in Peter's life to illustrate the dangers of following the will of others, or of culture. Peter had been brought up an observant Jew from birth. In the events of Acts 10-11 we see God overturning everything he had been taught in Mosaic law. There were clear hints in Jesus' teaching that Mosaic law was not intrinsically absolute with regard to food restrictions (Mk 7:18-19), but God was patient with Peter. He gave the vision three times, with no rebuking, because in this and the subsequent events in Cornelius' house He was revealing the truth that Gentiles did not have to become Jews in order to possess salvation by faith in Christ. Peter had twice before questioned and refused Christ (at Caesarea Philippi and at the upper room where his feet were about to be washed). In this instance his refusal, though proper, also had to do with his intrinsic character weakness of seeing and doing ...