“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.
Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me, scatters.” Luke 11:23 NASB. What does it mean to be ‘for Jesus?’ It means to be His disciple, to bear much fruit for Him and His Father; this is to tell the wonderful news of salvation to those who don’t know. If you are ‘for Jesus’ you will be unable to help yourself from doing something for Him, whom you love. What does it mean to be ‘against Him?’ This is the status quo. All who are not fully His or those living their life for themselves, who look to have their own way will sometimes or always be against Him, whether they are in the Church or in the world. For those in the Church like this, this is a halfway conversion to Christianity: one foot in the Church and one foot in the world. Read this article to find out more about what it means to be 'for Jesus' and to 'scatter'.
Are you tired of hurting yourself and others? It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. “And it happened that as He [Jesus] was reclining at the table in the house, behold many tax-gatherers and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, ‘Why is your Teacher eating with the tax-gatherers and sinners?’ But when He heard this, He said, ‘It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means, 'I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE, 'for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’” Matthew 9:10-13 NASB77. Why are all of God’s people today not seeking healing from Him? Aren't we all sick? This is God’s message to His people in our day too! There needs to be a balm in Gilead and help from the Great Physician, because many of His people in our day are in as much need of healing from the sickness of sin as they were when Jesus was dining with the tax collectors and sinners.
"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9 KJV. The key here is that ‘He is faithful’. Who is faithful? God is faithful. Our salvation and all the good things now and forever depend on the love and faithfulness of God to keep His promises to us, to forgive us and to help cleanse us from all unrighteousness and to provide all the other gifts that He wants to give us.
We want to help you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul. Matthew 22:38. We want to share with you the good news that God really loves you, even if you don’t love Him back. We want you to not be afraid of Him. There is no reason for anyone to be afraid of God, if they would allow Him to work in their life and would cooperate with Him. He will make this easy for you, if you will just let Him do it for you and find out how much He loves you! But even if someone will not let Him do this for them, there is no reason to believe that He will treat them unfairly. God is not like that. He is kind, loving and merciful, and gives people time to get to know Him and make their choice of where they want to go in life. We think you will get much comfort and peace when you find out how much God loves you, and everyone who has ever lived or who will ever live, and how fair He is. To use common vernacular, ‘God has been given a bad rap.’ The enemy of our souls has stacked the deck against God with his falsehoods and half-truths, or so he thinks. But he can only deceive the unwary and those who want to be deceived or those whom he can blind to the truth or poison with his malignancy. Many people seek religion or seek to obey God out of guilt or fear, rather than out of true love and devotion to Him; this should not be. It’s a place to start, but all need to get beyond this in their relationship with God. He should be your dearest friend! This is what we have been striving to do, to tell all who will listen how much God loves them, so that they can fall in love with Him! Our enemy is trying to make people so disgusted with all of it that they abandon their belief in God, and some have no religion whatsoever but hedonism. And others try to make it too easy to be saved and never be lost, because they don’t like the consequences. (They preach a religion without the need of continued repentance or without the need of carrying a cross or making changes or sacrifices.) And others yet live under a burden of guilt, never knowing if they are good enough to be saved, and are worried about what lies ahead of them. And others still are just blind to the direction of their life and the consequences of their actions, and some think that they are “good enough;” that everything will be all right in the end, without making sure that they are walking in the path that God wants them to go. But never fear! Where sin abounds, God’s grace abounds even more! Romans 5:20. You don’t have to stay stuck in going the wrong direction, be misled by wrong beliefs, or stay under a deep load of guilt or fear anymore, because God has made provision for your salvation! He knows just what you need and has a plan to save you, if you will let Him. So have faith and take encouragement! If you continue to seek for the truth with a desire to please Him, He will reveal it to you and it will all make sense! Then you will have no fear of the future, because God will be your guiding light.
No Tears in Heaven: There will be no tears in Heaven. Isaiah 25:6-8; Revelation 7:13-17; 21:1-6. How can there be no tears in Heaven if loved ones of the saved […]
“But if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7 NASB. This text is so true. This is looking at the truth in a different way. We need to contemplate what this means, it is so important! Those who are walking in the light as God is the light will not be thinking that they do not need to be too concerned about their behavior or whether they are free from all enslavement and entanglement with the sins and things of this world. Many surround themselves with preachers and others who believe that they do not need to be concerned very much about their behavior or entanglement with sin and the things of this world, and little mention is made of the sinner’s need of walking in the Light of God, to repent and have a change made in them. And others think that they believe in ‘the truth’ while they are not walking in the Light and have not His abiding presence in their heart. It is every Christian’s privilege to choose to walk in the Light as God is the Light, whether they will listen to His sweet Spirit when He whispers to their heart or not.
Conclusion of the wonderful passages and promises showing God’s great kindness and mercy towards His created beings whom He loves: Yes! These bear repeating, with descriptions added where needed to […]
Sin will not Rise a Second Time: Evidence that sin and sinners will not rise up a second time after their destruction: (We are giving this to you from several […]
“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.” Hebrews 3:12-19 KJV.
So what is the cure for unbelief? Faith. Faith is the opposite of doubt or unbelief. Unbelief in what? Unbelief in the promises of God. The children of Israel had been given a promise by God that He would give them the land of Canaan and help them to possess it, if they would follow His lead. Caleb and Joshua told the children of Israel that they were well able to enter the Promised Land, that God would open the way for them and give it to them. But the 10 other unfaithful spies lied to the children of Israel about this, saying many discouraging things to them, so that they did not believe the promise of the Lord.
