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Christian service involves suffering. It demands that we give our all to the Lord and his people.

Although it can be painful and strenuous, God promises that there is no sacrifice made for his sake in this life that will not receive a hundredfold blessing in return.

The knowledge of the glory that is to come makes all the suffering in our Christian service entirely worthwhile.

Christian service, not experiences or gifts, but a transformed life devoted to the service of others is the evidence/fruit of genuine faith and repentance.

It is expressed in our service of the Lord and the willingness to serve his bride, the church.

Chapter 10: Serving Faithfully
We are not to be ‘internally rotated’ as lovers of self, but rather externally rotated to love God and love neighbour.

This requires a repentance that the whole of the Christian life is.

The Corinthians prized the medium of the message more than the message itself. The same towards spiritual gifts. However, all spiritual gifts are meant for the *building up* of the church.

The reason for Paul’s suffering: to be humbled (as he was entrusted with treasures), learn more about the sufficiency of God’s grace, and be able to minister to those who have suffered.

Yet, ultimately, it is Christ who suffered the greatest of all men, to show his love for sinners. As we suffer with the Great Sufferer, our experience will grow us in maturity.

By understanding God and Satan’s role in suffering, seeing it is Satan’s hand guards us from bitterness, while seeing it is God’s purpose guards us from despair.

The instrument of Paul’s suffering:
The devil is God’s devil. When we suffer, both God and Satan are active with different purposes, God wants to reveal our sin and his sufficiency for us, while Satan harasses us and attempts to destroy our sense of God’s love.

In suffering, it is God given, while Satan attacks, we are not to confuse the two.

Satan wants to destroy faith, God wants to strengthen it.

God afflicts us in faithfulness, not in justice, to grow us in sanctification.

“The afflictions that come to the believer through the instigation of Satan are not out with the sovereign purposes of God to do us spiritual good and to bring us to see and taste the sufficiency of the Lord’s grace.”

There is a difference between wrestling and rebelling against God’s will.

Chapter 9: Knowledge of God

Humbling to know that God is incomprehensible, not that we cannot know anything about him, but as Calvin says ‘the finite cannot grasp the infinite’.

3 ways to describe God:
1. Negation: describe what God is not (infinite, not finite)

2. Eminence: describe God to the ultimate degree (omnipotent, all powerful)

3. Affirmation: specific statements about God (he is one)

Chapter 8: Scripture and Authority

Our ultimate authority is the Word of God, for our edification, reproof, correction, and instruction, so that we may be fully equipped.

Chapter 7 - Canonicity

The church has been providentially guided by the mercy of God in the process of determining the canon. We can be confident that we have the Word of God.

Affliction teaches us the ways of God. Not his ways in terms of decree, but his ways of sanctifying his own.

God puts us through affliction so that we may grow into the likeness of Christ.

The helmet of salvation is our identity in Christ.

As Satan attempts to deceive us of who we are in Christ, may we stand firm knowing that Christ, the forerunner in the faith, knew his identity and who he was.

Thus, to stand firm and mature in the Christian faith, we are to put on the helmet of salvation (who we are in Christ).