Secure in Our Salvation

The cross of Christ provides us with a salvation that leaves no room for uncertainty or doubt. If we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, the Father wants us to be 100 percent certain that we are securely inside Christ's provision of salvation in Him and Him alone. To that end, there are three test questions we can use to analyze our understanding of our salvation.

1. What does the word of God say? The Bible's teaching on salvation leaves no room for doubt. Acts 16:31 in the NCV says it well: "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved" (emphasis mine). Period. It doesn't say "you may be saved." It doesn't say "you might be saved." It says you "will be saved." And all you have to do to be saved is "believe." It doesn't say, "believe and do this" or "believe and do that"; it simply says we are to "believe."

2. What is the witness of the Spirit? Romans 8:16 says, "And the Spirit Himself joins with our spirits to say we are God's children (NCV). This means that when we receive Jesus as Lord by faith, the Father places His Holy Spirit within us. This ever-present, indwelling Spirit is the One who equips us to relate and communicate with God. The eternal witness inside us continually testifies that we are saved ... regardless of how our feelings about salvation ebb and flow. God's spirit within us moves us in ways that we find undeniable. When once moved by the Holy Spirit, we can't doubt Him. We know. Someone asks us how we know and we know because we know because we know. This isn't strange to those of us who are saved, we know we are God's children.

3. What is the desire of my heart? Watchman Nee said that the characters used to translate Holy Spirit into Chinese literally are translated "Resident Boss," and that is certainly understandable because the Holy Spirit takes up residence within our human hearts and powerful ... undeniable ... changes happen. A never-satisfied yearning for sweet intimacy with the Lord and a sensitivity to His will begin to develop. We can't stop thinking about Him. We can't pray enough, read the Bible enough, or fellowship with other believers enough. The more of the Lord we have; the more of the Lord we crave. This doesn't mean that we'll never sin. But it demonstrates our born-again spirit's unquenchable thirst for the Almighty.

We can know that we are saved. If we've made the commitment to trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, then we can immediately rejoice as a saved and secure child of God.

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The rain has been replaced with fog this morning. We have more rain coming (I think) but not until later. Of course, weather is such a fluid thing that it's ever changing. It changes from newscast to newscast so we're never sure about what's in store for us.

Nothing planned for today except to go out and get the mail. We haven't gotten many Christmas cards so far this year. We had a lot more last year by this time. I'm not sure what that means if it means anything at all.

Well, I know this is short but I really have absolutely nothing to write about this morning so I'm going to sign off and hope for more things to write about tomorrow. So until then ...