“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us [or given unto us], that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.” 1 John 3:1 KJV.
Yes, it is a great love that the Father has bestowed on us! He has given us His only Son, Jesus Christ to die for our sins, and if we will confess our sins, He will forgive us (1st John 1:9), and He will fill us with His precious Holy Spirit (if we desire), so that we can have the power to become His son or daughter! This is the true meaning of this text! If we desire, God will forgive us and change us into His likeness, so that as we draw closer and closer to His love, we will more and more reflect His love to the world. This is what it means to be a son or daughter of God! Oh wonderful love of God! Not only does He grant us mercy and help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16), but He also wants to grant us the joy of serving Him, and sharing His love to the world! Luke 12:32.
It is the most natural thing in the world for all who truly learned to love Him to reflect this love to all who are around them. (How can you not love Him?) If you will just fall on your knees, confess all of your sins, and yield your heart to His great love for you, all this love, joy and peace can be yours! This is God’s promise to you, if you would have it!
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” 1 John 3:2 KJV. If you have confessed all of your sins and have given your heart completely to God, then now you are the son or daughter of God. Every day give your heart back to God, and recommit your life to Him. This brings you much happiness and joy, for God never forces Himself on anybody, and He loves it when His children give themselves unreservedly to Him! The fact that you gave your heart to God 5, 10, 20 or 30 years ago has nothing to do with today. So do not deny yourself the truest joy of giving your heart back to God each day and each hour! It will make you happy! Why deny yourself this pure holy pleasure? It will make God happy and He will fill you with His precious Holy Spirit! And let not the stain of guilt darken your heart, when you can receive the forgiveness of your sins right away! There is no reason to wait for a convenient season to confess all of your sins. Acts 24:25. As soon as you sin make your confession known to God, that you may come boldly to the throne of Grace and obtain help and mercy in time of need. Hebrews 4:16. When you confess all of your sins, and yield your heart completely to God, then when Jesus comes back in the clouds with great glory, you will be able to see Him as He is, and will not shrink back in fear. “But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.” Hebrews 10:39 NASB.
You can never come before God boldly for anything, if you have any sin or stubborn willfulness in your heart. So constantly make your heart pure and clean before God, by confessing all of your sins of thought, sins of words and sins of deed. And then you will be able to come boldly before His throne of grace for your other prayers and receive the requests that you make, when your heart is pure! You can never have happiness or joy while you still have any guilt in your heart. You can never be all that you can be or be the son or daughter of God, if you have unconfessed or unforsaken sins. But there is absolutely no reason why you must have guilt in your heart or have unforsaken sins in your life, when God would be delighted to forgive you and give you the power to become His son or daughter! When you let God forgive you, and when you let God change you to help you to forsake all of your sins, you truly become His son or daughter! This is a most wonderful promise that God has given us, that He would want to call us poor sinners His son or daughter! What did we ever do to deserve this honor or love? Nothing! God does this out of His heart of pure and unselfish love!
No one but God knows the end from the beginning. Sometimes you have uncertainty in your life about the outcome of your life, or whether you will get the help you need to survive or get by. Before you have given your heart completely to God, you will have a lot of uncertainty in life, and probably some guilt, or unfulfilled duties and dreams and desires of being a better person. You may have prayed to God and made your petitions known, and struggled through your life trying to be a better person. But you probably failed too, right? Sometimes life can be very discouraging. Some people give up thinking that they could ever break out of the rut they are in, and break their bad habits and stop sinning, and they know that they are falling short of God’s plan for their life. You just want to be happy, right?
But even though things may look dark to you, you can receive the help that you so desperately need in God! Just throw yourself on His great mercy to save you: it’s what He’s been waiting for! If you will humble yourself before God, confess all of your sins, and just get to know Him, you will learn to love Him. If you desire this joy, spend time with God, studying your Bible, especially the many precious promises of His love for you, and faith and love building stories in the Bible, and then praying as much as you can. As you get to really know Him, you may find yourself falling in love with Him. It’s OK! Just let it happen. When you are ready (you will know when you are ready), tell God that you love Him and just give your heart to Him, and give Him permission to do whatever He wants in your life! (You can do this before you have fallen completely in love with Him!) Then give your heart to Him each day. When you belong to Him you will know it, your heart will be filled with such love and unspeakable joy! (If you have continued to yield your heart to Him each day and each hour, and always confessed all of your sins, and always obeyed His voice to your heart, and what you have learned from the Bible, then this will happen and keep happening.)
When you have given your heart completely to God, you have become His son or daughter, and your whole life will change forever for the better when this happens. Then you will wonder why you never gave your heart to God completely before. You will find that you have given up nothing of value when you agree to let God be the Lord of your life, but sin, misery and death. God’s precious light from the Bible will explode with clarity that you never saw before, and your heart will just yearn to help others and tell them how much you love Jesus and the Father. Then when Jesus comes back in the clouds with great glory (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:26) you will say, “This is my God in whom I have waited for!” Isaiah 25:9 NASB. He has come back to save me and take me to Heaven, just like He promised! John 14:1-3. I will go with Him and be happy forever!” All this joy and peace and eternity with your God, whom you love, can be yours, if you get to know Him and give your heart completely to Him! Everyone that has this hope in Him (1 John 1:1-2), allows Him to make themselves pure and holy for Him. “And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.” 1 John 3:3 KJV. This is the most glorious promise to us, that God is willing to make us holy and pure for Him!
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God be with you! Amen.
By John Foll
Posted first on Disqus on 12/28/2016 (saved at 3:23 pm).
For more information on this, and the love of God, and of Faith, please see our site: White Raiment Evangelism for more of our articles and books, etc.
#holy #spirit #happy #love #peace #faith #hope #joy #victory #need #son, #daughter #god #life #new #eternal #riches #mercy #precious #forever
Originally posted 2017-01-18 15:28:00.
“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'” Luke 14:26-30 NASB. Are you able to finish the course that is set before you? Hebrews 12:1. You will be able to finish the course that is set before you, if you count the true cost, and the true value of the surpassing riches that God wants to provide you. “And raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 2:6-7 NASB.
Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down His life for His friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you.” John 15:13-14 NASB. Jesus is the good shepherd who laid down his life for His friends!Jesus said, “Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?” Luke 6:46 NASB. We are Jesus’ friends if we do what He says. Doing everything that He said is doing everything that He has commanded us.
How to know if you are born again and belong to God? Do you love to tell of Jesus and His Father’s love? Or do you love to tell the faults of others? Do you love your neighbor as yourself? Does doing the right thing, being a good witness, and sharing your faith seem like a duty or a pleasure? Do you have a nagging guilt that you should do something for God and others? Or do you have a burning desire to serve God and help others? Are you so happy that you are free? Or are you bound in slavery and guilt?
Certificate of Achievement: This acknowledges that [blank] is a servant of God because he/she loves Jesus. [Your Name Goes Here?] Signed by the Holy Spirit. Today’s Date? Please look at this certificate and ponder the importance of what it is trying to teach, it is really quite simple, yet powerful. This pictorially shows us how we can please God, and know if we are on the right track or not. It is not just trying to be cute, but to help all to see the truth.
Give your heart to God every day! Why not? He loves you! If you promise to love and serve Him, by His power, and ask Him to bless you in witnessing to others of His love, He will be happy with you! Even though we are cautioned by Jesus not to vow, because we cannot turn one hair of our head white or black, He is talking about any promises that we make in our own strength. The key here is that we cannot keep an oath that we made ‘by our head,’ or by ourselves. But we can vow by the mighty power of God!
“Therefore they said to Him, ‘What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.’” John 6:28-29 NASB. What shall we do that we may do the works of God? Believe in the one God sent, Jesus. Yes, we repeated it. When you want to really understand a text, it is often helpful to read it again, because the Bible explains itself. Both the question and the answer are both contained in this text. This is another way of stating righteousness by faith!
The inspiring testimony of Charles Fitch - how he came to receive the Holy Spirit and have a closer walk with God. He learned how God could make him more like Jesus:
It is now several years, since, after a season of spiritual gloom and sadness, I came fully to the conclusion, that there was something in the religion of Jesus Christ, to which I had been a stranger. I had seen myself to be a sinner before God, richly deserving His everlasting indignation. I had seen that God would be holy, just and good, and worthy of universal and eternal adoration, while punishing me with everlasting destruction from His presence and from the glory of His power. I had also seen in Christ a Saviour, who, after atoning for all mankind on the cross, was able, on the merits of that atonement, to save to the uttermost all that come to God by Him; and on that Saviour I had cast myself as my only hope, and trusted in Him, and Him only, as my Deliverer from the wrath of God.
Peter said, “And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.” Acts 5:32 NASB. So obedience to God is the condition for receiving the Holy Spirit! There is a true Holy Spirit, and there is a counterfeit. How do you know which Holy Spirit is the real Holy Spirit? If you are obeying God in what He has revealed in the Bible, or if you want to obey Him, He will give you the help you need and the continued desire to obey Him in everything He has said.
The force of this is found in the fact that the Christian life, which is the result of faith, is progressive. The Christian life is a continual growth. Peter says: "Beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:17, 18. The only way to keep from falling from that which we have, is to grow. David says of the righteous man that "he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water." Ps. 1:3. This means continual growth.
