Church Planting International PO Box 250, Mt. Gravatt, Queensland 4122, Australia
God is far more interested in our character, (the quality of our personal constitution) than in what we accomplish. Character is the passive aspect of our being, Who we REALLY are! It is the collective qualities or characteristics which comprise our make up. In the natural there are numerous influential factors :a: HEREDITARY. The characteristics we inherit from our parents and forebears through genes, chromosomes and other character conveyors. b: UPBRINGING. The influence of our principles we are taught in our early life.
environment, the ethics and
c: EDUCATION. The sum of what we learn from our educational process. d: EXPERIENCE. Those things we learn and imbibe from life experience. These are the natural influences which helped form our character. When we become Christians, a whole new range of influences come into play :a: THE "CHRIST IN YOU" FACTOR. (Col.1:27) Christ came to change us from within. b: THE FRUIT OF HIS SPIRIT. (Gal. 5: 22,23) IN THE INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN. - Love, Joy, Peace. IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. - Patience, Goodness, Gentleness. TOWARDS GOD. - Faithfulness, Meekness, Temperance. c: THE LIVING WORD FACTOR. God is in His Word. His Character is in it. We imbibe Him and His characteristics through His Word. "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom." (Col. 3:16) The Bible is infused with the character of God. Everything in it is consistent with God's character. As we feed on the Word the character of God is formed within us. The book of Proverbs is an excellent example of this. It is filled with practical statements of wisdom which are consistent with God's view on behavioural ethics. Every leader should read a chapter from Proverbs every day. Its practical wisdom and moral values would then be imprinted into the leaders' spirit and form the characteristics of God in him. d: THE HOLY SPIRIT FACTOR. The disciples were transformed at Pentecost. (Acts 2) We too can be transformed by the power of God's Spirit. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would "Guide us into all truth." His presence within the believer is a quiet but insistent prompting which always leads into truth, never into error. So
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