GYCE Focus 2016: Coming to Christ

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GYC Europe

Daniel Pel

Defeat or Victory?

Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day that we've had so far.

We thank you for the opportunity to come together as a group and study your Word.

I believe that this is something that we all want, to come closer to you, to experience your power, to get to know really who you are, and to reflect you to a world around us.

So we pray that you'll guide us now in this time together, Lord, as we look at the book of Romans and as we look at the gospel on display.

I pray that it may not just be a theory that we will be looking at but an experience with you that we will all have.

The seminar title that was given to me is Defeat or Victory?

And I think when I got that title and I was asked to speak on this topic of what it means to surrender ourselves to Christ, what it means to live in Christ, I prayed about it and pretty much immediately my thoughts went to to the book of Romans which is 1 of my favorite topics to present.

I've been teaching at different Bible schools over the years, and normally this is something that we do in like a week.

You were there in AFCO when we did it, and yeah, so It's actually many hours that we go through the book of Romans.

But what I want to do is, and it's going to be also interactive, is we want to get kind of the big picture, the big overview of the first half portion of the book of Romans, or the first 8 chapters.

Because what Paul does in Romans chapter 1 to chapter 8 is he gives us a picture of the gospel and what it means to come to Christ.

And so this will be our specific, yeah, what we're going to focus on.

It will be Romans chapter 1 to chapter 8.

But before we get there, I want to share with you a quote that I just think fits very well with what we're going to look at in the Book of Romans and also fits well with the title of this seminar, which is Defeat or Victory?

And this quote is quite well known, I believe it will be known to a number of you, and that is from the book Steps to Christ, page 47.

And the chapter, it is chapter 5, and the chapter title is Consecration.

As I start reading I believe many of you will be like, ah, I've heard that quote before.

Page 47, but yeah, it should be easy to find when you go to that page at least.

It says, many are inquiring, how am I to make the surrender of myself to God?

And then it says, you desire to give yourself to Him, but you are weak in moral power, in slavery to doubt, and controlled by the habits of your life of sin.

Your promises and resolutions are like ropes of sand.

Now I think that that's something that we can all relate to.

We want to surrender our lives to Christ, we want to give ourselves to Him, but we also see that our lives are controlled by, you know, the Spirit is willing, the flesh is weak.

It's controlled by sins and experiences that we've had in the past.

And you make these resolutions, maybe you know these New Year's resolutions, okay, if January comes around I'm going to live like this, right?

But many times the New Year's resolutions, they're more like good ideas than really a power that fills the life.

And because your resolutions do not hold, they're like ropes of sand, it's like the slipping, the sand that slips between your fingers, you start wondering, you know, is this thing for real?

Like, can I really, does God really, is He really gonna accept me when I failed Him so many times?

And the quote goes on to say, you cannot control your thoughts, your impulses, or your affections.

The knowledge of your broken promises and forfeited pledges weakens your confidence in your own sincerity and causes you to feel that God cannot accept you." This is, when I read this, I'm thinking to myself, wow, what a description of what we've all gone through or are going through.

This thing that I want to surrender myself to God, I want to have victory in my life, my spirit is willing, my mind is willing, my heart is willing, I want to do all of this, but then where do I find the strength to do it?

And then when I fail, the knowledge of this failure leads very often into despair.

I'm going to get up early in the morning and study my Bible.

I'm not going to fall into using my time in this particular thing that I know is drawing me away from Christ." And so we have these resolutions, but many times it's like, it's a good description here, it's like ropes of sand, it's like sand that is slipping through the fingers, and then you start questioning your own sincerity, like, is this real?

I've made these resolutions over and over again, I'm not able to keep them, and this leads to despair, it says.

And many people, they will either walk out or they'll just continue to make new resolutions which continue to fail.

But then it goes on to say, This is now the second part of this quote that I wanted to share.

Now comes like, okay, what do we then need?

What you need to understand is the true force of the will, she says in Steps to Christ.

What you need to know is the power of the will, the force of the will.

This is the governing power in the nature of man, The power of decision or choice.

So the power of the will is the power to decide.

Everything depends on the right action of the will.

The power of choice God has given to men, it is theirs to exercise.

You cannot change your heart, you cannot of yourself give to God its affections, but you can choose to serve him.

You can give him your will, and he will then work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure, thus your whole nature will be brought under the control of the Spirit of Christ, your affections will be centered upon Him, your thoughts will be in harmony with Him." So this quote is kind of What we want to spend our time on is we're going to look at the book of Romans because this quote is talking about the problem and the solution.

The problem is that our commitments don't hold.

We want to do what is right, but we can't do it.

We feel that we fail God again and again, and we are led to despair.

That's really the problem that she just described there.

And then the solution is, it's all about the power of the will, the power of choice, making decisions to connect yourself with a source of power that is not inside of yourself, but is outside of yourself that comes from Christ.

That's kind of the foundation, but we're going to kind of look at how this works out practically in our lives, and throughout the book of Romans I think we'll get some answers to this question of how do you surrender yourself to Christ and how does this victory really work.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give a little bit of an overview of the book of Romans, the first 8 chapters, and after I've done that, after I've given you kind of the big picture, it's kind of like we're flying over.

You know, if you look at a forest and you want to know about a forest, You can do 2 things.

You can walk through the forest and you see the details, or you can fly over and you have a very different picture of that forest.

So in scripture, you have kind of the, you can study verse by verse.

It's kind of like looking at the details.

Or you can try to get the big picture, and both are important.

And what we're going to do first is we're going to get the big picture of Romans chapter 1 to 8.

This is the content that we're looking at here this afternoon.

And then afterwards, I'm going to group you up in groups and then I'll give each of you, each group will get a portion of those first 8 chapters and then you'll discuss it and I have some discussion questions that will help and then afterwards it will be the opportunity for each group to present what they have found in these chapters so that we can gather and then we'll kind of close off our time with some evaluation and and questions that you might have about what we've done.

Okay so Romans turn to Romans chapter 1 Romans chapter 1.

Who was the author of the book of Romans?

The Apostle Paul wrote the book of Romans.

As you know, a lot of the books that we have in the New Testament are really letters that were written.

A big portion of the of the New Testament were letters that were written by Paul to various destinations.

And so, you know, we look at it as books in the Bible but you can really just think of it as a letter, you know.

So you have the book of Ephesians was a letter to the church of Ephesus, the city of Ephesus.

And so if you were in the city of Ephesus in those days, you would get this letter.

You would open it up and they would read it in front of the congregation.

And so this was, this became later known as the New Testament, became part of our Bibles.

But originally, you can just think of it as a letter that was written to Ephesus.

And so you have the book of Galatians was written to the area of Galatia, which was a kind of a number of churches in a province.

And then you have, you know, first and second Corinthians were letters written to the church at Corinth.

And so the book of Romans was a letter written to which church?

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