aside on assurance1

God loves you w/ pains and failure. He doesn't change the rules in the middle of the game.

aside on assurance2

By the way, becoming unstable denies a person the privilege of Christian maturity because an unstable person generally reacts to life's circumstances at the emotional level. Have you noticed that? You will get an emotional reaction rather than an action based on principle. Unstable people are never sure of even basic things like, salvation, because if you are "feeling-dependent" and your grasp of salvation depends on how you feel, what if you woke this morning and you feel a little depressed or you don't feel so great, what are you going to be tempted to believe about salvation? It's gone from me. What if you made a mistake yesterday and you fell into sin, or did something offensive to God? Instability could lead you to believe what? You're lost. And what has God done? He's rejected you. He's cut you off. "How dare you make a mistake!" Some people have picture of God like that. I hope you've never cut your children off if they made a mistake, unless you've suddenly got perfect children. I hope you let them learn from their mistakes, but I'm sure you still love them, and keep your relationship with them because then you have the privilege of having more input into their lives. Isn't God at least as good to you as you have been to your children? What kind of God are you believing in today? If your experience is rooted in feeling, you will never feel secure about salvation.

The good news today is that regardless of how you feel, God still loves you, even if you don't feel saved at this moment. If you are believing and trusting in the atoning blood of Jesus, God says, you are "declared righteous. I have set you right. You are reconciled to me." Even though I may not feel it, God said it, I'm choosing to believe it. It has nothing to do with how I feel, it has everything to do with how He felt, in my place! And when that is secure in my life I can get on with the business of giving God the privilege of maturing me into the likeness of Christ. But anytime I let my eyes slip from Jesus to Bruce, that's when discouragement comes in. That's when I lose my confidence that God can and will save me.

By focusing on self or some other person, there is no power for change. None. My focus has to remain on Jesus. Can you handle even better news? Listen carefully. Even though you have a lot of growing to do (one or two of you probably do, I do!) while in the process of growing, you are not condemned, because your guilt and condemnation have been taken from you and placed on Jesus, that's how much He loves you. The only people I know who are enjoying Christianity are those who have let God take their guilt. They aren't living on a guilt trip. They are letting God grow them, and believe it or not they're actually enjoying the Christian life, they can occasionally smile about it. They have grace to count it as joy. They don't enjoy everything, but they can count it as joy because God has taken their guilt upon Himself. That's why I get so concerned when I encounter people whose sole emphasis is on human performance. Only when your eyes are on divine performance does human performance even improve.

If you fall into sin, you don't pop in and out of salvation! What do you do as a Christian trusting in Christ? Confess and repent. What is God's response? Does he say, "Stay away from me! You made a mistake!" Have you experienced God's forgiveness? What does He do? He reaches out his arms and says, "I love you. Let me forgive you and cleanse you. I'll even teach you how to not be bound by this." I'm tired of repenting over and over of the same sins. I've believed in a very wimpy God. If he's able to take my guilt and condemnation, isn't he able to break the power of sin in my life? Only looking at the cross do I begin to realize the destructiveness of sin and what it did to God and how anxious he is to break its bonds. He'll break the power of sin in the life of anyone who is trusting His death. But only if we're seeing what He has done for us, is there any hope of change. We have to see God first as He is. How can God break the power of sin in the life of a person who is not letting God take their guilt. We must be seeing God.

You know what prevents many of us from seeing God? Double- mindedness. We become unstable, and we believe here in the meeting, and go home what do we start doing? doubting This is what instability does to you. Your feelings become the main measure of whether you're saved or not, and anyone who's judging whether they're saved or not by their feelings, hasn't yet seen what Christ has done for them. When you see Him dying Your death, and His perfect sinless life credited to You? Could you ever be more perfect than that, having the absolutely sinless life of Jesus credited to You. I hope you have that this morning. Are you allowing God the privilege of declaring you righteous, not because You feel it, but because God said it.

Out of saving reltnshp until you come around and repent?

The bottom line of that is that a born-again Christian can never make a mistake. This understanding has no basis in the scriptural understanding of what sin has done to the human race.

Vast difference between stumbling into sin and and intentionally sinning. Pig and Cat. A born again Xian feels dirty, maybe even having crucified Christ afresh, not pleasant. Only born-again Xians truly repent, and what is God willing to do? Let's not make repentance a barrier between us and salvation. "We do not repent in order that God may love us, but He reveals His love to us in order that we may repent. Salvation does not come through our seeking after God, but through God's seeking after us. COL 189." get quote. The motivation for repentance becomes selfishness. So now you have another sin to repent of, but you can't repent of that sin safely either, because your motivation is to get heaven. We need a bigger forgiveness than one that is based on our performance.

How am I responding to temptation, am I wallowing in it?