Do you understand how God adopts you and keeps you in his family forever?
You need to have a basic understanding of the way God takes you from a non-believer to a believer and how he walks with you from the point He enters into your heart until He ushers you into his presence. This is the natural progression of a Christian’s life on earth and informs you on how God redeems you through a relationship with Him.
The result is an ever increasing assurance of salvation and a sense of belonging to God. After understanding how God initiates that relationship with himself and how he eternally preserves it, many respond with worship and praise for the love, mercy, and grace God has shown them.
One of the things we try to accomplish with this blog is to help people walk with Jesus. We write about how to think about God, how to reflect his image, and how to convey his word. We help people think through sticky, sometimes controversial theological concepts, learn a thing or two about discipleship and what it means to worship God.
One of the things that we haven't touched on yet is how we interpret Scripture. Since Scripture is the basis on God's special revelation, it would be important to learn how to rightly divide his word.
I ran across this blog post that helps us do that very thing. The author of the blog, Justin Taylor, asked Gerald Bray who is a Research Professor at Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, and director of research for the Latimer Trust, which questions do we need to ask when looking at a biblical text.
This may be one of the most difficult things to understand about grace. The essence of grace is unmerited favor. That is there is nothing one can do to earn favor. You can’t behave into it, you can’t buy into it, nor can you wish your way into it. You are at the complete and utter mercy of the sovereign decision maker to receive it.
Have you ever wondered why God chose the Israelites as “his treasured possession, out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.”? (Deuteronomy 7:6) Was it because they were the biggest or strongest or was it because of the Israelite’s desire? No, it was because God simply loved them and promised to Abraham that a great nation would come from him. (Deuteronomy 7:7)
Abraham was certainly among many people living at the time God chose him to be the father of the faith, yet Scripture gives us no indication that he deserved it. God simply chose him. (Genesis 12:1-3)
In the previous post, “God’s Anger, Melting Mountains, and Us,” you got to see why God has a beef with the human race and how he responds to those who continue to defy him. That is certainly a wake-up call to many and also very bad news for those who continue to defy him.
However, God provides a solution for man to get out of this predicament that he finds himself in and this is the Good News. Miraculously, God sends his Spirit into a person’s life and his Spirit turns a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26) This means that God turns a person who has opposed him into making that person receptive to hearing and receiving the Good News.
Just what is the Good News? It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, the Gospel message is found in John 3:16-17 ESV, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
When’s the last time you crossed a threshold? Say you’ve had trouble losing more than 25 pounds and when you stepped on the scale you had lost 30. Or say as a salesperson you had never earned your way into your company’s President’s Club. Then one year you did. In both cases, you crossed a threshold. You did something that you have never done before.
Now, wouldn’t it be great if you could break through the threshold of some of the sins that bind you? No longer would they be habitual. Nor would they hunt you down, begging you to act on your desire.
Examine Your Knowledge 
y God has a beef with the human race and how he responds to those who continue to defy him. That is certainly a wake-up call to many and also very bad news for those who continue to defy him.