John Mark Labagan 3/3/2020

CE YOUTH

Age of Opportunity Reaction Paper

Goals, Glory and Grace

The author of the book in this chapter shares his experience as a father, his struggles and
downfall moments on his teenage son and his description to his struggle was tiring and
overwhelming. Despite of it, what he is in mind is that this is a part of his ministry that he must
go through, it is a task, responsibility and a call that God has given him to do. He said “before we
consider God’s goals for us as we parent our teenagers, we need first to reflect on who we are as
God’s children. It is important that we see God’s glory and grace as far better than our sin and
struggle with parenting.” To support this, he quoted some passages in the bible that he said that
radically changed and alter the way he think about what God has called him to do in his
teenager’s lives. (Ephesians 3:20) “20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all
that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.” He then explains that it is
important for parents to look at their task from the vantage point of the awesome power of God.
That it is the power, by which He created the world, holds the universe together, raised Christ
from the dead, and defeated sin. Our God is a God of glorious power far beyond what our minds
conceive.

What he is telling here is that parents should not look at their responsibilities only from
the perspective of their own weariness and weakness. They must remember that they are the
children of the Almighty. Because He is Power and He is Strength and that awesome power and
strength is working within us according to Ephesians 3:20 and he supported this with another
passage from (2 Corinthians 12:9) which says that “My grace is sufficient for you, for my
power is made perfect in weakness.”
What is the chief of you?

The Fall

Question: Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created?

Answer: Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate
wherein they were created, by sinning against God.

According to the bible God has created man into His own image. Of all the living things
He created like plants and animals, man is very special because our engineering from the mind
and hands of the Creator was far more complex and advance compare to all His creations. For we
are created to be rational beings, we can think, move, talk out of our own will and we also have
conscience and emotions because God had created us with a soul which makes even more
different and special. Genesis 2:7 states that Man was created as a "living soul." The soul
consists of the mind (which includes the conscience), the will and the emotions. The soul and the
spirit are mysteriously tied together and make up what the Scriptures call the "heart." In
connection to this, Proverbs 4:23 says that "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it
flow the springs of life," so then the heart is the central of all our emotions. And all of this makes
man a man, perfectly created but with our own free will, emotions and desires, we have the
tendency to be tempted and commit sin.

Adam and Eve like normal people we are right now, even though they were immortals
that time and have a special connection and communication to God, they also still very open to
sin and temptation like what we are experiencing right now, for the author of sin is no other than
the devil itself. His mechanics to tempt Adam and Eve were no different of what we are dealing
it right now. Our first parents are also human beings, so that is one reason why they fell to the
devil’s temptation. God is a just and a fair God. He did not make humans a robot to just do
whatever He programs them to do. But robots as well have their own flaws and do mistakes
because there is what we call a mechanical errors and also computer viruses. So therefore
anything in this world except God would commit mistake, Adam and Eve were not gods and
they were only human beings that is prone to sin and temptations that is why they have fallen.