Jesus Christ Remains With Us Forever! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 2:27,

“As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.”

One of the things I love about the Lord is that he doesn’t change from day to day.

Here in this verse we read that the anointing the Lord has placed within us remains. Today, tomorrow, forever this anointing is something the Lord will not remove from us.

Both who he is and what he does in our lives has permanence. When it comes to the things of the Lord I can take great confidence that what I have in him is certain, sure and enduring.

What if I woke up in the morning to discover the Lord had left me? What if one day I realized he had moved on leaving me behind? What if he were not faithful? Where would that leave me?

But our Lord is nothing like that at all! “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8.

If there is anything in this life I can “hang my hat on” it is what the Lord does in our lives!

What a wonderful Lord we have!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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God Has Anointed Us! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 2:26-27,

“I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.”

To anoint means to apply, to smear or rub with. Here the apostle John tells believers they are anointed by God. This anointing teaches us about all things. It is a real anointing as compared with a counterfeit and remains in us.

John says there are others who do not have this anointing. Although they claimed to be in fellowship with God, because they lacked this anointing they left the camp of believers: their leaving showed they did not belong to the household of faith.

This anointing from God brings to mind some fascinating passages of Scripture. All passages that speak to a wonderful mystical spiritual work the Lord wrought in our lives the moment we believed:

“Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:13b-14.

“Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” 2 Corinthians 1:21-22.

“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Romans 5:5.

“We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” 1 Corinthians 12:13.

“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” Romans 8:9-11.

How wonderful to know God has anointed us! How wonderful to know this anointing remains with us and teaches us about all things!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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Our Salvation: Guaranteed By God! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 2:24-25,

“See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—even eternal life.”

As John talks of false teachers, “antichrists”, who had wandered from the truth into heresy, and had left the fellowship of believers while attempting to take others with them by leading them astray, he points to the tenacity of the faith of true believers.

True believers remain in the truth. Their remaining in the truth reveals they are true believers. True believers do not wander from the truth. As John points out in verse 19, “They [false teachers - the antichrists] went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”

The writer of Hebrews says the same thing, “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.” Hebrews 3:14.

The persistence of our faith demonstrates the reality of our salvation, of our relationship with the Son and with the Father. If we truly embrace Jesus Christ in faith we will never fall away from this faith. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

It is this last piece of what Paul has to say in 2 Corinthians 1:22 that captures my heart this morning. Our salvation is guaranteed! As John says in our passage this morning, “this is what he promised us-even eternal life.”

What God has promised will be fulfilled. After all, this guarantee rests on God’s faithfulness itself as we read in 1 Corinthians 1:8-9, “He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.”

How wonderful is this?!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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We Possess Eternal Life Today! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 2:17,

“The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

In this life there are those things that are of the world and those things that are of God. John enumerates those things that are of the world in verse 16, “the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does”. John points out that these things of the world are all going to pass away. But, as opposed to these things that pass away, he observes that those who do the will of God live forever.

When John says the man who does the will of God lives forever, we understand he is not suggesting believers escape physical death. What he is saying is that in physical death believers possess eternal life. Physical death becomes a doorway into the presence of Jesus Christ for believers forever - never to die but to live an eternity with their Lord and Savior who has given his life for them.

So, when do I receive eternal life? I possess it now, today. Now I am a child of God. Now I am marked as one who has done the will of God. In 1 John 3:23 John says, “This is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”

As believers, John tells us in verse 2 of that same chapter, “now we are the children of God”. I became his child when I believed in his name, and as a natural outcome, I love the brethren. When this happened I received eternal life.

Eternal life is not something I will achieve some day. Certainly it is not something I will aspire to, as if I could earn it or qualify for it in any way. It is something I possess today, right now as I write this.

As we read in John’s gospel 1:12, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”. Not sometime in the future, but the instant I embraced him in faith, I became God's child. You did too!

I find this just wonderful!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.

Believers Live Changed Lives - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 2:17,

“The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”

This comment from John follows his observation that if we love the world we cannot have the love of the Father. These two are mutually exclusive in our lives.

In the context of John's point here, doing the will of God is the change that takes place within us when we embrace Jesus Christ in faith. In the next chapter, John says, "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God." 1 John 3:9.

Getting back to 1 John 2:17, he doesn’t say that we can live forever if we do the will of God (working our way into heaven); he says those who do the will of God reflect their status, or their position, among those who have eternal life - because they have become changed people.

This is an important distinction. If we could earn eternal life by doing the will of God there would be no need to appeal to the cross of Jesus Christ. But as Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

We are hopelessly incapable of doing that which is God’s desire for the lifestyle we live without him stepping into our lives first. He steps in when we invite him in. As John says in John 1:12, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” He then enables us to live lives that are pleasing to him.

My point here is that we cannot do something to become what we are not, when doing that something can only come from being what we are not. We have to be born again to do the will of God.

The exciting point to all of this for me is that when we come to embrace Jesus Christ in faith, he changes us from within! As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, we are now a “new creation”. Having embraced Jesus Christ in faith we are given the Holy Spirit who enables a change within to live lives that are pleasing to God. So much so, that this becomes a reflection of whether we have eternal life or not.

Astonishing and overwhelming as I think of it this morning.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.