Redeemed as Male & Female: Christ Restores God's Plan - Talk 3

By Jack Chui

We have to understand how bad the original sin is to understand how great His redemption is

This time I will try and write about what the talk meant to me rather than just regurgitate my notes because I think I understood this talk more than the last talk.

"Original Sin is like the breath of God being expired in us. Jesus came to breathe back in His life with the Holy Spirit." So how does the Holy Spirit do this? --- In short to change our hearts so that we can love.

The Church can feel like its just an institution which dishes out a long list of rules, most of which we don't know and therefore don't abide by, and some we don't follow even if we know them. Its tough following rules --- remembering them is hard enough but there's something human in us that sometimes wants to push the rules to the limit and ultimately to break them if we can get away with it.

If "you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law" (Gal 5:18). The Holy Spirit came to lead or change our hearts so that we can be free from the Law. If we can love God and the Church enough, then we will automatically abide by the law without having to think much. Its like me and going to church on Sundays - I don't think of it as a chore, a killjoy to sleeping in or a boring waste of time, because if I love God/Church enough, I'll just want to go - be drawn there. The Holy Spirit in this way provides freedom from the long list of rules. Free because we have no desire to break the laws.

I'll say it doesn't happen in all areas of my spiritual life though. I still struggle to pray - one can say, if I love God enough, I'll pray more often... but unfortunately, prayer for me is something that I'm drawn to when I'm desperate... Sloth =(

So how might I overcome this laziness or other sin that we/I might have? By the gift of redemption.

If we give God our lust, He will give us the true love. Its like exchanging the counterfeit for the real thing!

Sin is just a twisted version of the good that comes from God. But if we give it to God, He can give us the 'untwisted' version.

This is a hard one for me... My laziness in prayer translates into laziness to just give it over to God. I don't seem to care enough about myself and perhaps others (because I'm asked to pray for them) because there's nothing bad happening to me to want to pray for myself. It sounds like the right way to go though - this however can only be given to God in prayer... Either way, I've been told that prayer is a discipline and that its not easy to keep up, even for the best of us. I pray that the Holy Spirit can change my heart to love God and His people enough to pray more.

This fight may be a continual one for me, and Christopher West ends this talk on the topic of the "master of suspicion". I am a master of suspicion because I don't fully believe in the transforming power of God to change my prayer life. I've tried many times, and there are periods where I'm quite prayerful, but then it lapses again. I need this redemption to give my sin to God continuously because I'm not redeemed once, but constantly...

It is the same with lust - just because I seem to be getting more control of it with the Holy Spirit's help, there will be times when it can be real struggle. God forgives and knows this. All He asks is for me to keep my eyes on his Son and try not to look away.