tOdAy's bIbLe vErSe tO PoNdEr oVeR:
"But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one." (2 Thess 3:3).
The Lord is faithful, to me this is true salvation in this life and in the life to come. To me this very statement, 'The Lord is faithful,' is more than enough for me to give assurance to throw my hopeless and unfaithful life in to the hands of God trusting His faithfulness to be revealed through it all. If you ask me why? I can tell you that I cannot trust my own mind, strength and limited ability. Because I have sin nature that I myself cannot trust, I cannot promise anybody enough that I will not fail and that includes even to God. Do not say that I am arrogant to say such a thing, even though what I say may not be the truth, but it is a fact that I have expressed. To some degree I may be faithful, but never hundred percentage of time, lo and behold I sin to fail God everyday many many times in many of my thoughts as well as my actions, sometimes unknowingly and still at other times knowingly.
When I think about salvation in its entirety, the Lord gives everything in salvation to us but all we give him for it in exchange is our sinfulness's, weaknesses, failings, diseases, sicknesses, etc...We take everything, but give worthless things to him back. In taking our curses and our inabilities, Jesus gives us the blessing which He has earned through his sinless life lived for us on earth for the Glory of God. In other words, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior not only suffered for us to redeem us from sins and help us inherit salvation, but he suffers for our sins even after our salvation as He is the holy God who cannot see and bear evil when it happens in his sight.
Because even though Jesus the Christ was God and has always been, he chose to become a perfect human to live one among us. Now that he has been born with human weaknesses and limitations just like us but with without the sin nature, he could have compassion on us and come to aid us to live the Holy life that God demands and His nature supplies whom we believe. Know one thing great with God, he never tells his children to do what he does not do already before them in demonstration of his own nature. That is why in salvation, we have become sinner by our works no matter how much we try. Having no hope, when we surrendered our life to Him, but by His grace he infused a new nature of Himself so that we as His child could become partaker of His nature and Himself more and more through it. So the bottom line is, God takes a hopeless unholy sinner from the world, infuses him with a new nature of His to overcome the old unholy sin nature and declares him to be holy just as He is based on identification, and then again takes him and puts him in to the unholy world to make him live a holy life by co-operation of choice to overcome the world through faith moment by moment for the Glory of God. Hallelujah! In fact, after we get saved, the only thing we can do is co-operate with God by operating in the new nature through faith. But only the Lord who saved us can help us be established in our faith spiritually and can guard us from the evil one as we do not have enough strength to overcome him. BUT THE LORD IS FAITHFUL AND HE WILL DO IT!
LET US PRAY DEAR SAINTS: Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you and praise you for creating faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. You have promised that you will make the just people of God like me who are saved, empowered to live victoriously over sin and the evil one through the gift of faith. Help me believe your promises and give you all the Glory for whatever spiritual victory I attain day by day. Thank you for protecting me from the evil one by your own wisdom even when sin gives him the legal rights in my life to operate through it. Thank you for the Glorious blood of Jesus which has been my hiding place of refuge from the storms of life caused by sin and many more reasons of my own failures in many areas of life. Praise you for your faithfulness in my life. Help me trust your faithfulness and enjoy it through out my journey of life on earth. For your glory in Jesus mighty name. Amen!
Much Blessings,
Abraham Israel I
"God is faithful even when we are faithless, sin might separate us from God, but the blood of Jesus unites us with him the moment we confess our sins to Jesus Christ our High Priest. Because God cannot discard his disobedient child as He belongs to him in life and also in death, he chastises us and brings us back to Himself through His sovereign power over us which supplies us with the gift of repentance. Salvation is the process in which God establishes us and protects us from all curses of sin as we co-operate with Him for His Glory. God will not work without us, we cannot work anything pleasingly acceptable to Him without Him working already through us, with us and in us." — Abraham Israel
