“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”       1 John 4:10     The Life that Is Led by the Power of GodBooks such as Leviticus and Numbers in the Old Testament talk about things pertaining to the law. They also talk about the seven feasts, starting with the feast of the Passover. People say that Christmas is the day on which Jesus was born, but this is completely unfounded. There is nothing in the Bible that says anything like this. On the other hand, there are precise records of the feasts which the Jews were to observe and the direction in which their hearts were to be focused in the course of their lives.The Jews lived their lives with the word of God, which has the tremendous power to be able to make their minds turn towards Israel like a compass when the time was right. But now let’s think about our own lives. Our parents’ generation have lived their entire lives giving their time and energy to support the spreading of the gospel and to promote fellowship among the brothers and sisters, while their children have been disappointed in their parents’ way of life, and, instead of walking the path they should be taking, they have tended to make excuses and go astray. There are also many children who think that all their problems are caused by the fact that their parents did not give them enough attention. There was a time when I also felt this way. Whenever a problem occurred that I could not endure, I felt like running away or avoiding it, and I was afraid to look people in the eye. I do not think there is anybody who would not have any resentment in such a situation.Nevertheless, we can learn many things through the Bible. God has entrusted the life of the flesh to the blood, and this blood knows and follows the path that it must travel. If, however, the blood breaks away from this path and is not able to go where it should, a problem occurs in the body. Every part of the body is connected to the blood; it passes through the aorta and the arteriola, and then, as it passes through the capillaries which are not dissimilar to the narrow gate, it has to provide the cells with the oxygen they need, but if it goes to another place instead, a problem occurs.Let’s compare this system in our bodies to the lives we are living now. As parents realize the truth of the gospel and do everything they can in their lives for the sake of the gospel, you can be sure that, more than anything in this world, their greatest hope and heart’s desire is for their children to accept this same gospel. Yet, even though their children may say they are saved, it is often evident that their hearts and their actions are far from the fellowship. At the same time, they give excuses, saying, “I don’t want to live like my parents. I want to give my children more love than I received.” If, however, you examine carefully through the Bible the way in which God gives His love to man, you will find that there are many times when His methods appear to be heartless. In the Bible it says, “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly” (Proverbs 13:24). This indicates that parents who do not discipline their children do not love them. When we read verses like this, we tend to think simply, “I had better scold my children from now on,” or, “From now on I had better accept any punishments from my parents.” Our thoughts tend to be superficial, just as we live our lives walking the earth but only seeing its surface. When we read and study the Bible carefully, however, if we examine what it says as though searching for a precious gemstone, we can see that within the Bible God has provided the answer to the question as to why He disciplined the Israelites. The Bible tells us that it was because God loved the Israelites that He trained them in the wilderness. The verses in the Bible should not all be interpreted by applying them to yourself alone. There is something greater than that. When we read the Old Testament, we find there is order, and within this order there are the feasts that the Israelites had to observe and it talks about the kind of heart and attitude they were to have as they served God. Of course, since we have been freed from the law, we do not observe these feasts in the course of our lives, and neither are we able to do this. Nevertheless, in order to observe the Passover, which was one of these feasts, the entire nation of Israelites would go to the temple during the first month of every year. This may seem senseless in the eyes of those who know the Bible and are born again, but even now Jewish people still make an effort to observe these feasts. Since the temple has been destroyed and no longer exists in Jerusalem, they now gather in synagogues and, in their way, they live by the law.  Since those who have been born again by the power of the blood of Jesus have read in the Bible that they have been freed from the law and have come to believe this in their hearts with absolute assurance, it is easy to think these things that appear in the Old Testament are not relevant to their lives. But this is not the case. Everything that appears in the Old Testament definitely acts as a guideline for each one of us, showing us how we are to live our lives. As Christians, we should not pick and choose in our lives of faith as we do when we decide which side dishes to savor at the meal table. Ask yourself how you are living your life in this world. We are all given the same 365 days in a year. In the course of that time, there are certain choices that we need to make, but do you make all kinds of excuses and live under the illusion that you are showing great respect for your parents if you go along to some gathering once in a while to please them? One day, a tax collector and a Pharisee each prayed to God. The Pharisee, who considered himself to be righteous, boasted unashamedly before God, saying that he fasted twice a week and always paid his tithes, and yet in God’s eyes he was not regarded as righteous. Even though he was confident before God in that he claimed to have done everything he was supposed to, he was not praised. (See Luke 18:9-14) The Bible tells us what God wants from us. What does it mean to be upheld by the words of the Bible or to be led by the words of the Bible?When the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, the twelve tribes would set up their camp with the tabernacle in the center and there they would offer up their sacrifices, but when the pillar of cloud suddenly started to move, they had to disassemble the tabernacle and follow the pillar of cloud no matter what. The certain way in which they were to move the tabernacle, who was to lead the procession, what type of cloth should be used to cover the disassembled tabernacle and even the color of this cloth was all preordained. God required them to move in such an extremely orderly fashion and there was no room for compromise. When the pillar of cloud moved, they just had to go, and those who did not want to move would be left behind as stragglers. This was God’s order. It was the way in which God trained the Israelites, and it was the way in which He loved them. We live our lives talking about this great wisdom of the Bible, but the problem is that we think it does not apply to our actual situation. I would like to ask the young people if the prevailing thought in their minds is perhaps, “That is what it says in the Bible, but I live my life in my own way.” God’s method of guiding the history of the Israelites and His method of maintaining the order within each of our physical bodies is not like that. Everything has been established to operate according to His laws and the methods He has ordained. When the Israelites deviated from God’s way, they were punished before God, and when our flesh deviates from God’s laws, we suffer from various diseases.Even though laziness may have led you to neglect reading the Bible as much as you might have, or even though you may only have read the Bible because your parents forced you to, if you have ever agonized over your sins with an honest heart before the Bible and then believed that Jesus has provided forgiveness for those sins on the cross and been grateful for this, then after that you need to think carefully about your responsibility when it comes to the time and the life you have been given. In this case, the love of God and the life of the flesh are not matters that we can consider separately. This is a matter that is very important and yet many people cannot see this. The way in which God wants born-again Christians to live has already been set out in the Bible. This does not change depending on the state of my heart or my situation. God has already written in the Bible how we should live our lives. We should not just pick out the verses that please us and suit our situation. We are intended to live being led by the power of God. We cannot follow God on our own. If there is a small piece of metal and a large magnet, it might seem that the metal follows the magnet, but in fact, it is the magnet that pulls the metal. Our lives are the same. In order for this to be achieved, I have to allow myself to be led by that power. The Bible tells us to do this by gathering together (see Acts 2:46). Before Jesus was crucified, what did He ask His disciples to do? He did not say that after His death they were to revere His name with all diligence. He just asked them to “love one another” (John 13:34). All the answers lie within these words. The Bible says, “The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years” (Psalm 90:10). When you think about the years one by one, our lives are not that long. Within our lives which are like a watch in the night, we need to live as God leads us. But what has been the attitude in our hearts towards God as we have been living our lives? Haven’t we blamed God if things have not turn out as we wanted them to, and haven’t we made excuses for not attending meetings saying that our schedules did not permit or we are just too busy? That is not to say that we should quit our jobs and drop everything to join in the work of spreading the gospel. People generally say that they need 8 hours of sleep a night; that is one third of a day. In that case, if a person lives for ninety years?a little longer than most?he will have slept for thirty of those years. Then he will have worked for forty years in order to earn money to survive, and of the remaining twenty years, he will have spent a few years watching dramas and a few years going shopping. In this case, he will not even have given a tenth of his life as a tithe to God. The reality of our situation is such that even though we pay tithes of our income, we are not able to give one tenth of our time to God. Doesn’t this fact serve as a whip to our conscience?The lives of the Israelites were focused like the needle of a compass on the temple in Jerusalem in Israel. In that case, what is my life focused on? The book of Proverbs talks about a young man devoid of understanding. As the sun was setting, he met an immoral woman at a street corner and she enticed him, saying that her husband had gone on a long journey with a bag of money and would not return until the appointed day and her bed was spread with tapestry with colored coverings of Egyptian linen. (see Proverbs chapter 7) We need to seek out the hidden meaning in this story and reflect on our lives to see whether we are running towards a trap in our own lives like this foolish young man. This is the way to fear God.   The Order that Appears in the BibleGod has set out clearly how to go about solving the practical issues that we run into on a daily basis, and the problems regarding those we love. It cannot just end with the desire in your heart for them to come to live for the gospel or the desire to live your life valuing fellowship. When this happens, parents just think, “If only my child would do this for me,” and when things do not happen the way the children want them to, the children develop a nonsensical victim’s men

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