Thursday night just had a nice Bible Study Session of "Songs of Solomon" (雅歌) in church.
It was a great session~ I have learnt that there will be a few stages of the relationships of God with us;
1) Initial Love 起初的爱
Everything is easy in this stage. You are just like a little baby in front of God. You want to seek God and want him to bless you in this and that. You desire and long for God's presence in your life and bless you in every area of your life,
You are still self-centerd, not God-centered.
2) Faltering Love 怯懦的爱
In this stage, your love to God starts to grow. More challenges from God came to your life and you will struggling between God and yourself. God will call you to do greater things and greater commitment of your life to him, i.e. go out and work with Him.
You still haven't set your priority right between your things and God.
3) Growing Love 成长的爱
In this stage, you will start to accept the challenges given by God. You start to undergo trials and tribulations, the major ones, to really test the relationship between yourself and God. It is a stage whereby things start to getting harder and harder and you should learn how to rely and lean on God to get through this period of life.
4) Transforming Love 转变的爱
You decided to be commited in Christ. You experienced the work of the cross, start to deal with the penalty of sin; Being sanctified and dealt with the power of sin; and glorified to deal with the presence of sin. In this stage, you start to get into the field to work with God, people start to see the difference in you for your love to God. They will start and ask you about it and you will be able to speak of the things you know about God. This 'know' refers to ginosko, which means know in experience, not knowing in knowledge.
You start to serve God and serve people at which there is a very balanced life.
5) Mature Love 成熟的爱
In this stage, you will stop complaining about things which happen to your life, you starts to accept things and lean on God on those matters. Your life is totally on God's desire, you will follow God's desire in whatever you do.
Your love to God will also be so appealing and attractive to Him whereas He will start to be excited of your presence.
You are no longer self-centered, but God-centered.
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For me, I think that the stage I was in when I started to listen to the series is: Faltering Love.
I started to feel God's challenge in my life, and struggling with the power of sin. I still have a problem in personal behaviour in my life sometimes. God has also called me to serve in Church and start to be commited in His ministry, he called me to serve as an usher, but I refused a few times, not commited in campus ministry. I kind of 'backslidden' from NUS CHC ministry.
Now, I think after the whole series, I grew to Growing Love stage. At which I want to bear the cross with him, start to experience trials and tribulations. I want to be the dearest person to God, I would want my life to be centered around Him. I want my life to be dependent on Him, I also want his Glory and light shine through me to the World.
I learnt to be broken in myself so that I could release my annointing and shine in the world.
Of course, my goal is to Transforming Love and ultimately Mature Love! I pray that my relationship with God could grow day by day and I want to love God day after day!
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Franco
SGod88
