Gift #1 Assurance of Heaven
I hope you
are having a great day today. For those
of you that have gotten a little attached to my blogs, sorry that I have not
been writing as consistently as you may like.
I sometimes battle with feeling “worthy” of giving out any kind of
advice, or encouragement. To combat some
of this – I generally stay away from subjects that I may not have had the best
successes with. One thing that I do have is a number of years of having a
personal, mutual relationship with God in Jesus Christ. If you have read my blogs about my testimony,
you will remember that I became a born-again Christian in 1976. Since that time, I have thought a lot about
the wonderful gifts that God has given to me and to everyone who knows Him. That is the subject of this post and a few
posts to come.
The first gift that I would like to talk
about is a completely wonderful, fantastic, awesome gift! It is the gift of knowing for sure, with absolute
certainty, without any doubt that you are going to heaven when you die. I would like to tell you a few reasons why
this gift is so wonderful and so certain.
(#1)
What makes it so certain is that it is based on the eternal truth of the Bible. This is one of the most important reasons why
this truth is so great. I have met a lot
of people that have confidence in what they believe. I remember when I went door to door talking
to people about Jesus, I found a lot of people that had confidence that they
were going to heaven when they died, but when I asked what this confidence was
based on, I heard a lot of different answers!
Some people based it on a religious path that they were following. Some people were basing it on their own abilities. Some were basing it on a “spiritual” pursuit
of what they thought the example of Jesus was, which they thought was a pursuit
to obtain godhood. Can you imagine? We are supposed to become godly in our
character, NOT in our nature. What is
for sure and for certain that if you are basing your confidence on anything that
is not based on biblical truth, then your confidence is misplaced, and you are
in danger.
When
I first became a Christian, I battled a little bit with doubting my salvation
because I was trying to rely too much on emotion. I realized later on that emotions can vary,
and they should not drive our faith. I
heard a story back then that I was not able to find a reference for today about
a young girl who had become a Christian but was struggling with doubt. (If you can find the details about this story,
please put it in the comments). One day when
she was battling with intense doubt, she stopped and once again bowed her head
and prayed to surrender to Christ one more time and then she made a sign with
the date and put it in her front yard.
Whenever the devil, or her emotions, or anything else would cause her to
doubt her decision, she would simply say… just read the sign. She was putting what God said and her decision
to believe it before anything else.
There
are a lot of wonderful Bible verses to hang on to when you are battling this
type of struggle. The one that became
the “go to” verse for me was in first John.
1
John 5:12,13 “He that has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God
does not have life. I have written these
things to you who believe (have trusted in) the Son of God, that you may KNOW
that you have everlasting life, and that you may believe (continue trusting) on
the name of the Son of God”. MKJV (notes added)
What
makes this verse so strong for me is that it uses the word “know”. Sometimes we can hope for something, we can
wish for something, but then we can know something. When you are basing your belief and life and experience
on the Bible – then you can know for sure and just say to any doubt “read the
sign”.
(#2) What
makes it so certain is that it is “belief based” and NOT “performance based”. This is a truth that I came to understand
more fully after reading the book “The search for Significance” by Robert S.
McGee. This is a great book to read, if
you want to reinforce this principle. Sometimes
when we live day to day in such a performance-based society – we can be tempted
to use this principle in our spiritual life.
It is true that God wants our lives to be conformed to the image of
Christ, but this is the “affect” and not the “cause” of our salvation. There is a phrase “don’t put the cart before
the horse”. We need to remember that the
horse is our faith, and the cart is our performance, not the other way around.
(#3)
What makes it so certain is that it is accompanied by fruits in my life. When we place our faith in Christ as our Lord
and Savior, then God sends His Spirit to live in us. The Spirit gives us the ability to become His
children. I talked about this in detail
in a past blog. We do not base our assurance
on our performance, but it is wonderful to know that God accepts us as we are
when we come to faith, but He loves us too much to leave us that way! He lovingly tries to help us become like
Jesus. He lovingly tries to motivate us
to display the fruit of His Spirit and not ours. If you read the entire book of First John,
you will see the expected results of a person who has come to Christ. These are wonderful changes that God makes in
the life of a believer in Jesus.
(#4)
What makes it so certain is that it has been accompanied in my life with my
public testimony. Romans 10:9,10 talks
about an internal belief in your heart and an external confession with your
mouth.
Because, if you confess the Lord
Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead,
you shall be saved. For with the heart one believes unto
righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation.
When
I became a Christian, it was customary back then that you would go forward in a
Church and let everyone there know that you are now a Christian. Even though I prayed to receive Christ at a
Christian camp retreat, the next Sunday when I got back into town, I went
forward during the altar call at the end of the service and let the leadership
know what I had done. When something so
wonderful happens in your heart, you want to tell someone about it. I know that when I talk about confessing to
others, and displaying the fruit of the Spirit in your life – you may think
that I am implying a performance-based relationship, but I do not think that I
am. An illustration that I have used
over the years is to describe a dad giving his son a new car completely
free. He hands him the keys and tells
him that the car is now his! A little
later on he gives him some advice about the use of the car. He encourages him to follow the laws, he helps
him get insurance on it, and gives him some caution about the hazards he may
face. The guidance that he gives him
takes nothing away from the fact that the car was completely free. It is because the dad loves him that he gives
him the guidance in its safe use. God is
the same way with us. He gives us free
salvation in Christ and then because He loves us… He gives us his guidance. What a great gift!
Written by Lee Malden 2023
For more information: email lmalden@hotmail.com
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