“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.
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Originally posted 2017-01-18 15:28:00.
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6 NASB. Why is it impossible to please God without faith? Because you must believe that He is and that He rewards those who seek Him. How will He reward you? By giving you the help that you need to be faithful to Him and listen to and hear His voice. “But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the LORD." Jonah 2:9 NASB.
This is an introduction to a series on precious truth that we want to present. We want to help you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind […]
The Unity of the Scriptures. We want to build upon our order upon order, and line upon line doctrines. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17 KJV. What scripture does Paul say is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness? All scripture. What scriptures were the scriptures in Paul’s day? Just the Old Testament. Paul didn’t start to write any of his epistles until a long time after Jesus had gone back to Heaven, and most likely his own writings, although inspired, were not considered on the same level as scriptures until a later date. Our point is to make you aware that the books of the Old Testament were the scriptures first, and they were the scriptures that Paul specifically referred to when he wrote the epistle of 2nd Timothy. In addition to some Christians wanting to get rid of the Old Testament as part of their rule of faith, atheism, for some time now, has been trying to destroy our belief that God was the creator, as the Bible says He was in the book of Genesis. What’s at stake? The unity of the Bible, and whether God really meant what He said, or whether He changed His mind and said something different at a later date.
The articles in our series: “Order Upon Order, Line Upon Line, Precept Upon Precept!” on our Love of God Blog: are designed to teach you the importance of studying the […]
We will post precious truth about Bible doctrines that are essential for you to know, that you might not be aware of.The goal of this blog is to help everyone […]
Dear Friend: I see you have had a lot of trouble since you became a Christian. You have had great trouble and were wondering why God wasn’t helping you. You haven’t had an easy life, and the enemy of humanity has been greatly troubling you and trying to put you down, and to steal your new life away from you. You don’t know why you can’t have an easier time, and not have so many problems. I would like to tell you about my special friend whom you are starting to get to know. His name is Jesus. He knows what you are going through, the problems you inherited, and knows the battles that you are fighting. But He has won the battle for you at the cross and has been given all power and authority. Matthew 28:18. Just let Him fight your battles for you and rest in His strength. He is pleading on your behalf to the Father. Sometimes you have felt like you were ready to give up. Are you ready to give up yet? Then let God take care of you.
"The just shall live by faith." Who are the just? -- They are only those who are of faith, because men are justified only by faith. For though we all "have sinned and come short of the glory of God," yet we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." For "to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Those who are of faith and those alone are the just in the earth.
“To whom would He teach knowledge, and to whom would He interpret the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just taken from the breast? For He says, 'Order on order, order on order, line on line, line on line, a little here, a little there.' Indeed, He will speak to this people through stammering lips and a foreign tongue, He who said to them, "Here is rest, give rest to the weary," And "Here is repose," but they would not listen.” Isaiah 28:9-12 NASB. [Or as it says in the KJV: “this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.”]. Yes that is the question: To whom will God teach knowledge? Would He want to keep having to teach us over and over the basics of the truth when we should have already learned it long ago? God prefers that His people advance closer to His ideal for them, instead of being “stuck in neutral” or backsliding. In this article, we want to discuss some important Bible study principles to help you to know how to properly study and understand the “saving truths” that you need to know, and not be deceived into the many errors that plague Christianity today and modern man. We want to help equip you to know the truth if you don’t already know it. But we believe there is ever more to learn. It’s time to get beyond the basics, but to get beyond the basics the errors must be unlearned and true faith learned by all who would want to be weaned from spiritual infancy.
The Joy of a Fool or the Joy of the Wise? Which will you have? How can both the wise and the fool have joy? “Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom: but a man of understanding walketh uprightly.” Proverbs 15:21 KJV. Now from the NASB: “Folly is joy to him who lacks sense, but a man of understanding walks straight.” Proverbs 15:21 NASB. Solomon declared that foolishness or folly is joy to the man who lacks understanding. The fool is compared with a man of understanding who walks uprightly, the wise man or the righteous man. Is there also joy for the righteous? Yes true joy! There are two paths to joy. Which one will you choose?
