4 - Lesson 1: Salvation, Part 2

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipleship.

We are in a class of lessons right now in these lessons that we're going through called

An Introduction to Discipling. An Introduction to Discipling. And we're glad to have you with us.

We're glad that you could join us. For those who are watching live, we are glad that you are in with us and take the time out of your day.

Maybe you're watching on YouTube and you take time out of your day to spend with us to listen to corny jokes and hopefully some good teaching.

But we do also want to welcome those of you who are watching maybe for the first time. We know that there were many who had learned about our academy from the

NorCal Fire. That's one of the events that Striving for Eternity puts on that we just had this past weekend. It's one of the three

Spreading the Fire events that we put on currently. And so we know a lot of people are tuning in for the first time from there.

So welcome. What you can expect is some really bad jokes, some really good teaching, and a really ugly teacher.

Look at that face. All right. So we are grateful to have you with us and we are going to do a review from where we were last time.

Now what we're doing, as we had said, is really looking to teach you how to disciple other people.

And so someone in the chat room is saying, corny jokes, yes.

Bad teaching, yes. Oh, bad teaching, no. Okay. I'm being distracted by the engineer.

He likes to make fun of me. Anyway, so I'll say this just off the bat.

I said this, you know, if you watch live actually we do a little bit of a pre -class where we interact with the chat room and things like that.

I gave an update of NorCal Fire and I let them know and I might as well let you know that I really didn't sleep on the flight back.

And so I came from San Jose, California all the way across the country and really didn't sleep too well.

So anything, and I mean anything, can happen. I'm like kind of punch drunk right now, going on the second wind.

But that's right, I got to stay with a wonderful family when I was out there and the poor gentleman, he comes out late at night to get something to eat or something and he looks and it's like two in the morning and I'm still up working.

And he's just like, aren't you going to sleep? You gotta be up at like six or seven. And I was like, yeah, you know, advantage of not sleeping but I do need to get some sleep and I got like very little.

So needless to say we are teaching you how to disciple people.

And we're using a book that we produce here at the Ministry of Striving for Eternity called Growing in Grace.

And we're using that as a tool just because of the fact that what that provides is not only something that you can pick up from our ministry and then you can use, but you can also adapt it, but it will teach you how to use this.

But really what we're trying to do is also teach you what to look for when you're discipling someone, how to go about a discipling relationship, how to conduct one.

So if you get a copy of the Growing in Grace book, what we encourage you to do if you're going to get that and you can get it from our store, you can pick that up from our store.

And what we encourage you to do is to pick that up and basically look to kind of hand it to someone that you're going to be teaching or discipling.

Let them work on filling the blanks in on their own so they start interacting with the questions, digging into the scriptures, looking at what the scriptures say and interacting with that.

And so you could do that.

I really want to encourage when you do that, it's important to let them know that, you know, do it in pencil.

It's okay if you get a wrong answer. Then what you want to do is meet with them weekly and go through the answers.

Okay? Why weekly? I mean, you may have to miss because of schedules, you may have to miss getting together with someone.

But the more often you meet, the more regularly that you meet, the more that someone's going to be able to keep to that schedule.

They put that time aside and they're going to not plan other things.

If you do every other week or once a month and you get together with someone like that, typically what happens is because it's not a set schedule, people tend to forget and because they forget, they don't keep to that.

And they end up going, oh, I already have plans. And then quickly what you find is that your discipling relationship evaporates.

Okay? So, it's important for you to keep on a regular schedule.

Now, if you were paying attention in the first couple of classes, I said that you don't have to do just some book like a growing grace book.

You don't have to do a Bible study. But you could do something where you're getting together regularly and you're looking and evaluating with them.

You're teaching them. You're getting feedback from them with their learning and just kind of helping them grow.

Okay? That's the goal. The goal of discipling is really, as it says in Matthew 28, is to teach them all things that you have been taught.

And so, you want to teach them those things. Alright? Now, with that said, what

I do want to encourage is this, that not only should you get together regularly but it doesn't have to be just doing a

Bible study. You could go running together. You could lift weights together. You could just, you know, get together just to have a meal.

Go grab coffee or tea together. Sit in a coffee shop and just spend some time talking to one another.

You want to know what's going on in that person's life though. And so, we're going to go through the growing grace book that is actually something that we designed at the leadership of a church that I was first in.

And it's been modified and we've gone different routes. Everyone's kind of edited on their own and made their own version of this.

And so, it's really kind of neat. And this is the version that I'm going to teach through. It's the version that we have that you can pick up in our store.

It's one that we want to go through so that you can kind of get an idea of what kind of things you want to go through with somebody.

And you want to be making sure you spend enough time to ask them what kind of things are they not sure about?

What questions do they have? Maybe from their devotions. Maybe they have a new faith and they were sharing it with others and they got questions they didn't know answers to.

Whatever it may be, you want to be there to just listen to them. An important part of discipling, if you remember, was listening.

So, let's do a quick review. First off, where are we going to go? All right, so this is what we're going to cover in the book.

These are the 12 lessons that we're going to cover in these several weeks.

And again, just because there are 12 lessons, I encourage you to try to do it with your students in 12 lessons, in 12 weeks.

But don't rush it. And you can always pick up the following week as we're doing because we're not only filling in blanks, we're also telling you how to disciple.

So, the lesson that we're looking at is lesson number one and it is called

Salvation, Reconciling with Our Lord. We looked last class at the need for a relationship with God and we said that the need was because all men are born spiritually dead, that God's angry with the wicked every day, that we can't save ourselves and therefore we went to the way of salvation which was that we must repent and receive

Jesus Christ. And that was where we had left last week that we needed to receive

Christ. This week, we're going to start by looking at the blessings of a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The blessings of a relationship with Jesus Christ. And that's what we're going to look at.

Now, where we left off in last class, you're going to get to the point of saying to your student, okay, you've talked to your student, you've asked hopefully, okay, where are you individually?

Do you know Christ? That was the last question we had there. Have you ever received

Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? They're going to answer yes or no to that. And then if so, when did this happen?

I have in my book here July 21st of 1984.

I must have received Christ at just after birth, right? Because I was born in April. So, it must have been, you know, because I can't be that old, could

I? Okay, maybe I could be. All right. So, let us take a look at the blessings that we see of a relationship with Christ.

Now, one of the things is that we do not want to talk about the blessings that you'll have in a relationship with Christ if someone doesn't really receive

Christ. If they say, have you ever received Christ as Lord and they say no.

Now, you're going to handle the rest of this book actually very differently until they can say yes to that.

Which means that every week you get together, you're probably going to want to go back to that question and say, you know, what's holding you back from receiving

Christ? Have you received Christ this week? Did you repent? All right. So, that sort of thing you want to, you know, this is one of the first of the questions that's going to determine how you're going to teach this.

I have one person I know who when he teaches this book, if they don't answer yes to that, he doesn't go on.

He goes, okay, let's go back to the beginning then. You know, let's do this in detail and see because really it could be deceptive.

You start saying, hey, let's talk about the blessings of you being a Christian when they're not a Christian. And the other thing that you don't want to do, and you want to be careful when you explain it this way, is if they say no to that, you don't want to say, well, these are the blessings you receive.

No, no, no, no, they did not. You don't want to lead them to think that they received something they did not.

And so, that's a thing you want to be careful.

You also don't want to be at this point then talking to them if they say no, they haven't received

Christ. You don't want to talk to them as if, well, hey, if you put faith in Jesus Christ, if you repent, look at the great blessings you could receive.

Don't do that. Unless, of course, you're going to also add to this all the things that's going to happen when you become a

Christian. Like, all of a sudden, you're going to be attacked by the world. All of a sudden, your culture is going to hate you. All of a sudden, demons, the enemy is going to have you marked.

It's okay, we've got a Christian there. Unless you're going to do things like that, it's something that you want to be careful.

So, you want to teach this part now differently if they're a believer.

And if they're a believer, you're going to say, these are the blessings that we mutually get to enjoy, right?

So, let's take a look at this. First one is in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, one of my favorite chapters of the

Bible. Verse 17, and it says there, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old things passed away. Behold, the new has come.

And so, if we look here in our syllabus, we have some fill in the blanks.

That's the advantage of the syllabus, of having this syllabus, or really this booklet, Grown in Grace. You're going to fill in the answers.

So, if you've been following along, I hope you've done your homework by filling in the answers in pencil.

If you're in the chat room, when I give the right answer, just give a shout out in the chat room whether you got the right answer.

If not, give the answer that you did provide, and we're going to do that throughout this class so that we can interact with you.

Because sometimes people have differing answers that you may have, and I want to be able to provide those, and why some answers are better than others.

I'm going to do that with ones I've seen over time. And I'm also going to say that this was used, the

New King James Bible was what was used. So, some of these are really, if you have a New King James Bible, you're going to pick it up.

And if you don't, you may not get it. We're going to probably update it for ESV.

But you are, letter A there, a new creation. A new creation.

That's what we're taught from 2 Corinthians 5 .17. As someone who believes in Christ, is in Christ, you become a new creation.

Old things have passed away. Behold, all things become new. By being a new creation, we get to enjoy the fact that, well, let me explain it this way.

You know, there's times where some of us kind of beat ourselves up over our previous life, okay?

Our unsaved life. Things that, and sometimes we still are living with the consequences of our life before Christ.

And it's because of that, that understanding that we have become a new creation is important.

And this is something that I would explain especially if I'm going through this book, I'm discipling someone that's a new believer.

Remember, we're discipling people at all different spectrums, right? From brand new believers, someone that just received

Christ, someone that's been saved for a long time, maybe still immature, they've been sitting in church but not learning much, maybe someone that is mature, maybe you're a pastor or deacon in the church and you're discipling someone for leadership.

We are discipling at all different levels. But if you're dealing with someone that's a new believer, it's really, really important to encourage them with the fact that as someone who is a new believer, you're going to struggle with some of those things from your past.

And I got news for you. I've been walking with Christ for over 30 years now and still struggle with things from my past, okay?

So it doesn't go away always all that easily. And so it's encouraging to know and to reinforce to a person as a believer in Christ, there's going to be times where our flesh wants to beat us up over our sin of our past.

And put us down. But we have become a new creation, okay?

And things have become new. And so we want to remember that, alright?

Now let's move on. Let us look at 1 John 5, verses 12, 1

John 5, 12 and 13. And it says there, if you look, whoever has the

Son has life. Whoever does not have the

Son does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the

Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.

Now notice that last part, that you may know that you have eternal life. And that's actually the blank there. Letter B, we know.

Your blank there is know. We know we have eternal life. Now if you're talking with a new believer and actually even someone that's been walking with Christ maybe for a long time.

I remember I was discipling someone who had been saved longer than I was.

And basically still struggled with an assurance of salvation.

We had that this week, this weekend at the NorCal Fire. Friday night we had someone who just really has been a

Christian from what we understand. And I don't know the person to know their life, but they said they've been a

Christian for a very long time, many, many years. And struggled with an assurance of salvation.

As a new believer it's going to be even a greater struggle. And so in this one what you want to do is help them to realize that according to that verse in 1

John, you can know present tense that you have present tense eternal life.

Eternal life's not something you're going to get when you die. It's not living forever in heaven.

It's not living with Christ. It is knowing Christ. Okay, that's what

John says in John chapter 7. I'm drawing a blank.

Yeah, 17, sorry. John 17, 3. Jesus says there that what eternal life is that he says, and this is eternal life,

I'm doing this for Mary, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.

And that's what eternal life is. Eternal life is knowing God. That's it.

And so what we end up with is we got to realize that we as believers in Christ, we have eternal life right now.

Okay, it's not something you can lose. We have lessons in our systematic theology class that you can look at on whether you can lose your salvation and go through all that.

But it is a great assurance to me. And we got into this discussion this weekend with this young lady.

And it was like, how do I know that I have? I mean, I lose that assurance. How do I know?

And the question I asked her is, you're explaining some of the sin in your life. Do you hate the consequences of sin?

I mean, do you just hate that guilty feeling when you go back to that same old sin? Or do you actually hate the sin itself?

And she said, well, I hate the sin itself. I said, good. That's a good sign. See, if you just hate the consequences, then, you know, you're really not that, you know, you're just, it's all about the consequences then.

But if you hate the sin, it's because you've become a new creation. All right? And that is why we know, or one way we know that we're in Christ.

And if we're in that state, if we know we're in Christ, we can rest. We have eternal life.

We already possess it. All right? Let's look at letter C there. And let us look at Romans chapter 8, if we could.

And that says, and we'll read this and then fill in the blanks.

Who is to condemn? And this is something that Paul does a lot. Asks lots of questions.

You'll see this throughout, especially the book of Romans. Jesus Christ is the one who died.

More than that, who was raised. Who is at the right hand of God.

Who indeed is the intercessor for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written, for your sake we all are being killed all the day long.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our

Lord. Let's look at another passage. And it's in Romans chapter 10.

And in here we see it says, May my sheep hear my voice and I know them.

They follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish.

And no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all.

No one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the

Father are one. And what you see here, if you look in the letter C there, we can never be separated from the

Spirit of God. That's your blank there. Spirit of God once we become a Christian. Now if you've been kind of following along, we become a new creation.

We know that we have eternal life. Again, you're speaking to someone that's a new believer.

This is an encouragement that you want to really spend time and force on them. Once you know

Christ, the Spirit of God will never depart from you. That is important because people struggle with that.

I've said it already a couple times. So letter D. Ephesians, let's read Ephesians 1 .7.

And remember, when you're doing this, I encourage you to have them read the passage, each one of these passages.

Encourage them when they do the study to read the whole chapter that's referenced here. But at least read the verses.

Have them read them when you're getting together with them. So actually I should make you guys in the classroom to read this.

So why don't you guys open your Bibles and read this aloud while I read it to you.

Because if I just sit back and I'm silent while you're reading it, you won't hear anything. Alright, so I will read this.

You can look on the screen and read aloud. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

Now if you read that aloud in the chat room, please just say, yes I did. Just real quick, yes

I did if you read that aloud. Post that in the chat room. So I'll tell you why in a moment.

So in this verse we see that our sins, our sins, letter D, our sins are now forgiven.

Our sins are now forgiven. This especially to a new believer who's struggling with this, boy this is new, a new thing.

What we want to do is we want to see how we're encouraging them in that. So we want them to see their sins are now forgiven.

Alright, now for those who said yes they did, read it aloud. What I'm going to need you to do is give us your name and either,

I'll tell you what, if you could give your name, private message,

Christine, Christine LV in the room there, or Mitch, what's his handle?

Mitch, or no it's not Mitch, it's MLebron522 is it?

Okay, so contact either one of them privately, give them your name and email address, okay, or actually an address because you're going to be receiving something, alright?

And they can see in the chat room who actually it is that said yes I did, so that'll work out well.

We're going to send some out to you, so what we're going to be doing is making sure you guys are paying attention in class, following along, not just chatting in the chat room, but we really want to be doing that, alright?

So, because this is my way of kind of discipling you guys too. And so, besides, if you're like at work and doing class, you know, all the co -workers around you will hear you just reciting scripture and be like, what's that?

And then you can just turn and say, I'm just reading what God's word says about your sins can be forgiven, you know, just, alright.

So, John 1 12, we're going to read this one for and so, what we have here is one that most people actually, this is a verse a lot of people, when they see it for the first time, it's like they go, huh?

Because they didn't know that. But let's read this one aloud and it says, but to all who did receive him, him is speaking of Christ, let's read that again, but to all who did receive him, who believe in his name, he gave the right to become a child of God, alright?

And so, what you see here, leave it up just for a moment, you see here that the right to be called a child of God is to those who receive

Christ and believe in his name. Do you see how that is? Now, why is that important?

Well, a lot of people think that we are born children of God. But letter

E here is, if we receive Christ, we are now considered, here's your blank, a child of God.

A child of God. You see, not everybody is a child of God. And I hope that you guys, again, if you're getting these answers correct, from the fill in the blanks, just say that you got it right, say if you had something different, say what you had so we can interact with that.

But not everybody is a child of God. Everyone is not born in a state where they're right with God.

You become a child of God, you have the right to be called a child of God only after you receive

Christ and believe in him, alright? Letter F, we're going to go to Romans, we are going to go to Romans 8 .17.

Romans 8 .17. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

So if we look in our syllabus here, we are heirs, that's your first blank, we are heirs of God and joint heirs, that's your next blank.

So if you think about that, what's an heir? An heir is someone that inherits something. And what we're getting at is you end up seeing that you as a

Christian are an heir of Christ. You inherit the kingdom with Christ, okay, as a joint heir with Christ.

So that helps to provide a student with the mindset to have for the future.

We can sit and focus on the past and beat ourselves up in the past but that's a bad thing to do. You want to redirect them to be thinking of eternity.

And so that's what you're going to want to do in your disciple making. You want to be discipling someone to be thinking of eternity, pointing to Christ, pointing to eternity, pointing to where we're going to spend eternity.

Focus there, focus on being an heir of Christ. So someone is saying that I didn't follow up on letter

C, that we can never be separated from the God once we became a Christian. I thought

I did follow up on that. That was basically that you can't lose your salvation and that becomes important with the whole assurance.

The last blessing that we're going to look at, let's look at 1 Corinthians 3 and 16. Do you not know that you are

God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you? Now let's also cross -reference in here

Romans 8, 9. You however are not in the flesh but in the spirit.

If in fact the spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

One more we're going to look at along this line is Ephesians 1 .13. In him you also when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him were sealed with the spirit of promise.

And so what you see here is that we now have, ready for your blanks? We now have the spirit of God.

That's your blank, spirit of God. We now presently have the spirit of God dwelling within us.

Did you see that the tense in each one of those is present tense. We have the spirit of God dwelling within us.

So what we end up with is the fact, someone's saying for letter

D actually. Let me go back to that. Someone just posted that they said for letter D our sins are now forgiven but they said the love of Christ to D.

Our sins are now the love of Christ. I'm not sure if that one makes sense. If that's what, letter

C it might make sense. We'll never be separated from the love of Christ. I could understand that for C. If that's what, maybe that's, okay that's,

I'm being told that's what probably was the follow up of letter C. You will get that sometimes for letter

C. That we'll never be separated from the love of Christ. That's a perfectly good answer as well.

There's not just one answer sometimes to some of these. So thank you for letting me know that. So if we have the spirit of God dwelling within us, these are the blessings that we have.

What we have with that is the fact that what is the spirit's job?

What does the Holy Spirit do? I'd encourage you to go to our class on the

School of Systematic Theology and look at the lessons we have on the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the

Holy Spirit and you will see that he does a lot of things. He illuminates our mind to the truth of his word, to an understanding of his word, to the application of his word.

So that was the blessings of a relationship with Christ.

Let us look now at the assurance of a relationship with Christ.

The assurance of a relationship with Christ. And so what you have here is that can we be assured that we have salvation?

That's a really, as we've been going through this, you see we've been dealing with this. And really what I'm doing in this lesson is kind of building up after someone says they're saved, especially as a new believer,

I'm trying to build up to this question because this is where you're going to find not only new believers but people who have been walking with Christ for many years struggle with this.

This question, can we be assured? Now what's the difference between eternal security and assurance of salvation?

Eternal security is the fact that once we're saved we cannot lose it because it's God who saves us.

It's the nature of God. It's something we currently possess. But when we look at the assurance, that feeling of salvation, that we can lose.

And that's often because of how we're living. When we're living right we feel like we're saved.

Because we just sense that closeness with God. And when we're not living right we don't notice that.

We don't feel that. And we feel like maybe we lost our salvation. And the further we are from God the more we feel that way.

So when we become a child of God there are certain evidences that assure us that we are a child of God.

And I'll say this before we look at these things too. As I said to this one person this weekend, you want to really focus in on two books if you're struggling with assurance of salvation.

You want to focus on the book of 1

John. Because 1 John is really written toward that end. Second, you want to look at the book of James.

Why the book of James? Because James is the James is devoted to what does genuine faith look like.

And so that's going to help you with gee am I really saved? Is this how you're living? You can go to our website,

Striving for Eternity, down there. And you can go to the audio section and there's a whole bunch of messages that should be out there that I had preached through the book of James and see what we believe on that.

So let's take a look at these. Letter A. We are honest about our sin.

We're honest about our sin. 1 John 1 .8. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

And so if you look at your blank there, the truth is not in us if we say we have no sin.

That's their blank there. If we have no sin. And so we look at that one and say there are some people who teach this doctrine of sinless perfection that they don't have sin anymore.

They don't sin anymore. Either you or God is lying. Right? I'm going to trust

God. God says if you you're not one of his if you say you have no sin.

All right? We do sin but we're forgiven. But we're going to be honest about it.

What does it mean to be honest? You're not going to try to cover it up. As an unbeliever we try to cover up our sin.

We lie. We gossip about people. We'll attack other people because they say something that's true about us but we don't want anyone else to know so we're going to verbally attack them.

That's how our pride works. We need to be honest about our sin. Let her be there.

We are obedient to God's word. We're obedient to God's word. First John, notice these are going to mostly all be in First John by the way.

First John 2 .4 Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandment is a liar and the truth is not in him.

So we are obedient to God's word. We know him if we keep, that's your first blank, keep his commandments.

That's your second blank. We know him if we keep his commandments. Are you being obedient? Now if you look at what we just said on the first one clearly we're not going to keep all of his commandments because we're going to sin, right?

So we're not going to be perfect in it but as a pattern of life you should be being more and more obedient to Christ.

Not continuing exactly as you were when you first, you know, before you profess to be a

Christian. So there should be a change between the way you used to live and the way you now live. Does that make sense? So we are to be obedient to God's word.

So we are to be honest about our sin. We're to be obedient to God's word. Letter C, we are loving other believers.

Did I actually say that? I gotta love other Christians? Yeah, when you go to church you gotta love every one of your brothers and sisters, alright?

And so let's take a look at this one. First John 2 .9 Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.

We are not in the light if we hate, that's your blank, if we hate other brothers or sisters in Christ, okay?

If you have hatred in your heart toward them, chances are you're not a believer.

Can you get bitter toward them? Yes, we can struggle with bitterness but we need to be repenting of that.

That's a sin that we ask forgiveness for and we're making more in the image of God, being obedient to his word, therefore we should be more and more loving other people, alright?

Letter D, we do not love the world. We do not love the world.

This is gonna be in First John 2 .15 and 16. Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the

Father but it is from the world. And so what you have here is the question, if we love the world, what is not in us?

If we love the world then what's not in us there, your blank is the love of the Father. If you love the world, you don't love the

Father, okay? So the love of the Father is not in you if you're loving the things of this world.

Now does that mean, Andrew, and this is the thing you're going to want to explain to people, especially new believers, it does not mean that you can't enjoy the things of this world, okay?

It doesn't mean that I can't enjoy a good meal or something like that, all right?

It means that you shouldn't have a love for that, living for that, okay?

Letter E. We are practicing moral uprightness. We're practicing moral uprightness.

This is John 3 .10, 1 John 3 .10. By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he one who does not love his brother.

And so the question that we ask there is, how are the children of God and the children of the devil manifest?

And here, because this is a long blank, you can have a lot of different answers. So here you just want to get the idea right and you want to talk through it, but it's those who do not practice righteousness nor love his brother.

Those are the two things that are mentioned. So if you're not practicing righteousness, and that's really kind of the one when we're saying practicing moral uprightness, that's really the issue.

You need to be being more and more living in a moral way, living in a way that is practicing righteousness.

So what you end up seeing there is we need to encourage them to be growing in their faith.

Will they stumble? Yes, they will, just like we did, and we do.

And you want to talk about your personal failures as well. You want to let them know that you failed as well.

You want to be open with the person you're discipling. You don't need to go into detail. Make sure you don't do that. Don't go into more detail than you should because you don't want to cause them to stumble.

You don't want them to cause... I especially say this when it comes to sexual areas. You don't want to be telling them details of areas of where you sin and they start having a view of you that mean that they can't get out of their head, okay?

Remember that. But you want to talk about the fact that they want to be living in a way that's pleasing to God and continuing to grow in their practice of righteousness.

And the last assurance that we have there is that we are to bear spiritual fruit.

We're to bear spiritual fruit. And this one's in Galatians, Galatians 5, familiar to many of us.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

Against such things there is no law. And so what you have there is read the fruit of the

Spirit in Galatians 5, 22 and 23, which we just did. And then ask the question, do you see these qualities developing in your life?

Yes or no? Okay, deal with whatever they're going to answer. If they say yes, good.

If they say no, you may want to go into each one of those. Go into detail. Explain what each one would look like, okay?

And so you want to go in and, you know, you could go into your own background.

Have you struggled with showing love to people? Because sometimes that helps them realizing that, oh, they're not alone.

Sometimes you might struggle the same way they struggle and realizing, oh, there is hope. As I dealt with this one person last night and being able to say to them with the struggle that they personally struggled with, a son that I struggled with in the past and was able to say,

I could tell you that after many years it can be overcome. It can get easier, okay?

You can do things like that and you want to do things like that, all right? And so I will say yes.

Congratulations to those who got 100 % in the class on getting all the blanks correct, okay? What you want to now do with them is if you look at the bottom of your growing grace, we have an assignment.

We have an assignment each week and here's what I'm going to encourage you to do. Do the assignment. The first assignment is to memorize 1

John 5, 12, and 13 now. Once I say that, when I start class next week, if I was discipling them, what

I would then do is ask them the very first thing to recite 1 John 5, 12, and 13.

The other thing that I have, and I'll hold my book up, is that we give you a page for you to put your testimony and you can have them write it out or they could type it out.

Mine's typed out. Mine's actually, if you care to read it, if you go to the website down here, strivingforattorney .org, go to about us and you'll see a section that says

Andrew's testimony. You will hear how he got saved and you will see that there.

Alright? That's there for you and if you're part of the

Facebook group, the Striving for Attorney Facebook group, some people already started doing this, I encourage you, write out your testimony or type it, write it.

One person wrote it out, took a picture of it, put it up into the group for everyone to see. You can do that.

If you don't want everyone seeing it, you just want me to see it, you could email that at academy at strivingforattorney .org

and that'll get over to me and I can take a look at it. Alright? If you are going through this and saying, you know what,

I don't have a book but I see that this could be really helpful for me to get one of those Growing in Grace books, you can order one at our store.

They're only about $7 or something like that. That's basically the price for us to get them. Alright?

So you can do that. We do want to let you know something new and that is if you want to help encourage us and support our ministry, clearly you could go to the website, go to the donate page and you can sign up for monthly donations.

That would be a great way. You could do it through your bank and have your bank send a monthly check. That would be great and there's different levels that you give and you get different gifts at different levels.

But there's another thing, something brand new you could do that is no effort on your part after the initial setup.

But if you go to Amazon Smile, that's smile .amazon .com and then do slash ch,

I think that stands for charity, slash and then this is the number that they gave us, 80 -0620169.

It would be nice if they gave us like Striving for Attorney. It would have been easier to spell it out, right? But if you go to the link that's down there and you can go to a special website.

Every time you buy things from Amazon, you go to smile .amazon .com instead of the regular

Amazon site. You go there, everything you purchase, when you log in at that site, we get half a percent of your total purchase sent to Striving for Eternity as a donation.

So if you would sign up today, it would be a great encouragement to us. And that way, from then on, everything you get, you just go purchase the things you need for your home or for things.

I just got done, unfortunately, doing a big purchase for gifts for people that were volunteering at the

Spreading the Fire event at NorCal Fire. And I wish I had this set up beforehand, but oh well. So if you could do that, that would be great.

We'll mention that again. Now, as we always end these classes, we want to encourage you to encourage other people.

And the brother that I want to encourage is someone we've encouraged in the past. Actually, we encouraged him last time this year, mostly for the same reason.

And that's Brother Dan Bowen. Dan is the local guy that does all the work at the

NorCal Fire and he does a lot of work. He sets up the evangelism teams. He makes sure we have a place to go evangelize.

He arranges all the transportation for the speakers, housing for the speakers and for other people who can't afford to get a hotel room and they need speakers, they need housing.

He works with the local church, getting everything set, making sure that we have tables set up.

It's a lot of work. And what that means, it's a lot of time away from his family.

And so I want to encourage you to encourage him. He has just gotten done spending a lot of time away from his family to serve those people that attended the

NorCal Fire. And for that reason, I'm asking you to go out this week and encourage Dan Baldwin.

You can encourage him just by going through and just thanking him for what he did for NorCal Fire.

But he is a guy that's at his church, he sets up like regular outreaches, evangelism outreaches with his outreach team, the

NorCal Seed Sowers. They go out regularly and he's one that does a lot of the setup for the outreaches.

So if you'd go and encourage Dan this week, it would be a great encouragement to us. Next class, oh yeah, that's right,

I didn't go over the overview. Well, we'll go over the overview. Let's just put it up real quick. And that we'll go over.

So let's just go over that next week. I'll put that in. But there's a sheet that we'll, for those who are enrolled students, we will send out the, basically the

PowerPoints of an overview of each of the lessons. So we'll pick up next week with the overview.

That'll be a good thing to do. Alright, so until next week, I want to encourage you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.