Joe: Hi everyone, thank you all for joining us again. In this segment we'll continue our
discussion from Chapter 1 in volume 3 of the "Basic Elements of the Christian Life." The
title of this chapter is the "Two Principles of Living."In the last segment we talked about
this chapter, we talked about how these two principles come from chapter 2 of Genesis
where we see two trees that match these two principles. In this segment we'd like to go
on to discuss how these principles relate to our Christian experience today. So, related
to this, can you share with us about how we can know whether we're living by the principle
of life or living by the principle of right and wrong?
Tom: The way we can know that we're living by the principle of life or by the principle
of right or wrong, Joe, really has to do with a basic matter related to every Christian,
that is that we need to realize that from the moment we believe in the Lord Jesus we
have the divine life that has come in to us through our divine birth. And with any life
there's a kind of a sense and that sense, normally speaking, when your body is healthy
you feel very peaceful, you're comfortable, you're peaceful, maybe even energetic. Well,
with the divine life, everything that we do (we have to realize) affects that life. So,
if we are considering a certain course of action, whether to say something, do something,
the divine life within us will be full of feeling. So, as we consider a certain action
we can know whether we're on the principle of life by the fact that the life of God either
rises up within us, and it makes us feel joyful and peaceful or whether the divine life causes
us to feel unhappy or having a kind of a grieving, an uncomfortable feeling, that's when we're
taking the way of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we go on the way of
right and wrong, the life of God will not be happy. So we need to see that the life of God is full of feeling.
Joe: So the life of God is full of feeling,
and one way to know which principle we're on is whether we have a sense of life and
peace or whether we have a sense of death or maybe we feel depress or deflated. So these
are the ways that we can know the difference between these two principles. Can you also
give us some examples of how these principles can be applied?
Tom: Well, the principle of life and the principle of right and wrong can be applied in every
aspect of our daily life, both in big situations and in the small matters of our daily life.
A common situation that affects young adults would be their education or their employment.
So you could say to take a job or to go to grad school; one is not right and the other
wrong but whether or not the Lord, according to the principle of life, is taking one of
those courses of action really would be dependent on, would be affected by how we feel. If as
you begin to pray and open to the Lord about going to grad school, you feel very peaceful
and full of faith, full of joy then this may be an indication that the Lord is moving in
that direction. However, as you are considering this before the Lord, you feel the sense of
uneasiness, you're not peaceful about it, then you know that the life of God may not
be taking that way at this time. It would be the same with the matter of taking a job.
Well, these are big matters, and a lot of times Christians find themselves concerned
about the matters of career, education, employment, marriage, but we need to realize that God
cares about every detail of our life. If we only experience Him in those big things we
would miss out on a lot of experiences of the life of God, which are very crucial for
us to grow as Christians. So, when we consider even the small things like: I have 15 minutes
this evening, "Lord, are You taking this 15 minutes to pray?" "Or would you rather me
take 15 minutes to speak to someone about You?" Neither one of those is something bad
but the life of God may at this instant have a particular feeling as far as how we should
use our time. So it's very good for us to consider and take this step to bring everything
to the Lord whether it's the big things or the small things. And see how the life of
God within us feels about that particular matter.
Joe: These examples are really helpful because in both of the examples neither choice or
neither option is wrong. So whether we take a job or go to graduate school, or whether
we spend time to pray or spend time to speak to someone about the Lord, neither option
is wrong but it depends on the Lord's life in us and what feeling He gives us at that
time. So instead of making decisions based on which one is right or which one is wrong,
as Christians we make decisions based on the feeling of the Lord's life within us.
Tom: That's right.
Joe: So Tom, thank you so much for sharing this with us today and thank you all for joining us.
We've enjoyed this segment on the "Two of the Christian Life."
and we look forward to more segments from the "Basic Elements of the Christian Life."