"Though we change our minds inconsistently sometimes, He knows our heart and has made His great salvation secure and our place in it definite. When we choose Him, we have Him..." |
GOD IS NOT friable. He did not send His Son to die for a fragile salvation. We are not beads on a string that might break if we wiggle our butt wrong. God is not horrified when we mess up. He isn’t moody and so rethinks all of creation because “dadgum that John Smith in 2024.” Salvation is, with one exception, forever. Betrayal of the Holy Spirit is the only reason you will ever no longer be a child of God. And if you are worried that you have betrayed Him, then you haven’t. Your worry about it proves that. One who betrays the Holy Spirit does not care that they have done so. I had the Spirit ask me to not pray for a person once. That was an awful moment to me. But what He said was that they had made their choice. It all comes down to our choice, and though we change our minds inconsistently sometimes, He knows our heart and has made His great salvation secure and our place in it definite. When we choose Him, we have Him and can breathe a sigh of relief.
“I give to them the gift of eternal life and they will never be lost and no one has the power to snatch them out of my hands. My Father, who has given them to me as his gift, is the mightiest of all, and no one has the power to snatch them from my Father’s care.” (John 10:28-29 TPT)
We are supposed to grow, however. We must learn His ways and become familiar with His voice. We must renew our minds to think like Him and react like Him, so that we look and sound like Him. This is the meaning of the armor in Ephesians 6. Minister Dutch Sheets said we will look so much like Him, dressed as Him and speaking His Words, that the enemy has to do a double take. We become so strong in the Lord, so full of confidence in His power in us, so intimate with Him that there is no space between us. That is God’s desire. But we must choose to grow. We can stay infant-like for the remainder of our physical life. In heaven, we will learn what we did not know and much more that is not in the Word. But in order to take hold of all God has given us on this earth, and it exceeds what we can imagine, we must decide to press in. We must make time to read the Word and must spend time meditating (dwelling on) it. We must learn how to pray, both in English and in the Spirit. We must make Him a priority, and the higher a priority He is, the more of His glory He pours out upon us and within us.
We sometimes say the other person has a stronger calling than we do, but God does not limit Himself in anyone. You simply have no idea how incredible He wants to be in your life. This is our calling to each other. It is why God has made ministers of all types. We are to encourage each other, to lift each other up and shut the door on any idea God is far from us, salvation is easily lost, and our Savior was here yesterday and is coming tomorrow but meanwhile today, we’re swimming in the toilet.
Shut the door, too, on the idea our nation, your nation, is lost forever. Many have preached this. Others speak a mixture of the strength of salvation as God turning His back on governments. Jesus is King of all. All governments are His. He’s turned loose of no country or nation. God is as strong today for people in their culture in their location as He was for Israel yesterday and the plethora of nations mentioned by the prophets such as Ezekiel. He has a plan for tomorrow but not at the exclusion of what we need in this hour. What God has done for mankind covers any area, any trouble, any place we need Him.
What my mother (and many others) said growing up comes back to me – if you can’t say anything nice, then say nothing at all. Because our words affect those who hear them, even if that is only ourselves. This is so serious that in heaven, God holds all our prayers, and all those prayed in the past, in golden bowls (Revelation 5:8). Every word spoken to Him remains before Him. Yet He who is consistent and faithful, who is longsuffering and merciful, is seen by some as uncertain with our salvation. At the slightest misstep, what He's given us through His graciousness can be lost. No, God has removed all striving for salvation under our own power and He’s placed the entire weight of it on Himself. Because He cannot fail, and He will not allow us to fail. We must know the truth of Him for these uncertainties to be torn down in our thinking and then commit to growth so that they do not return.
“For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Remove thyself and cast thyself into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that what he says shall be done whatsoever he says shall be done unto him.” (Mark 11:23)
“For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.” (Romans 10:10-11)
Photo by Prahant Photography on Unsplash
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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com
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