I trust God to fulfill His promise. He redeemed me and He promises to keep me. I am a born again child of God and I do not believe there is any way to become "unborn".
I may falter along the way, but that affects my day to day relationship with the Father ... it does not mean I am no longer His child.
Just like my children if and when they behaved foolishly, they were still my children. Their foolishness did not sever the parent – child relationship. Their foolishness only affected the close communion we enjoyed.
God talks about chastening in Hebrews 12. He chastens us because we are His children and we enjoy the peaceable fruit of righteousness when we submit to His chastening.
We need to learn to run to Father when we screw up. He chastens us to draw us close to Him ... don't hide from God like Adam did ... run to Him with our broken heart because we broke fellowship with Him, climb up on His lap and let Him hold us close and apply His healing balm on our self-inflicted wound.
Once we are born again, we are no longer the same as the "present condition" we were in before we were born again. We are a new creation in Christ Jesus.
"become worse before the day of resurrection, than we were before receiving the Holy Spirit" ??? How is that even possible ???
The Holy Spirit works within each and every born again believer, producing spiritual fruit within the believer, setting the fruit of the Spirit against the desires of the flesh and over time the believer desires the fruit of the Spirit more than the fleshly desires and the fleshly desires melt away. This is a maturing process. We start out as newborn babes desiring the sincere milk of the Word that we may grow thereby. As we grow, the things we enjoyed before we were born again do not hold the same appeal to us.
1 Peter 1:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
vs 4 – our inheritance is incorruptible ... it does not fade away ... it is reserved in heaven for us.
vs 5 – we are kept by the power of God. He is faithful and I believe He will keep me.
God keeping me does not mean I sit idle ... He does tell us He created us unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. The only "good works" though are the "works" wrought in us by the Holy Spirit
... that fruit we are to hold out to all with whom we come into contact ... love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faith, temperance ... who doesn’t like a little of that in their life???
... speak God's Word to all we meet ... someone doesn't like you because you tell them God's Word??? Jesus warns us we will be hated for His name's sake so don't be shocked when God's Word is rejected but don't stop speaking.
... love one another ... if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
If we find it grievous to do those things God would have us do, we might want to do a checkup from the neck up to see if we have been drawn away from Him ...
.
I may falter along the way, but that affects my day to day relationship with the Father ... it does not mean I am no longer His child.
Just like my children if and when they behaved foolishly, they were still my children. Their foolishness did not sever the parent – child relationship. Their foolishness only affected the close communion we enjoyed.
God talks about chastening in Hebrews 12. He chastens us because we are His children and we enjoy the peaceable fruit of righteousness when we submit to His chastening.
We need to learn to run to Father when we screw up. He chastens us to draw us close to Him ... don't hide from God like Adam did ... run to Him with our broken heart because we broke fellowship with Him, climb up on His lap and let Him hold us close and apply His healing balm on our self-inflicted wound.
Once we are born again, we are no longer the same as the "present condition" we were in before we were born again. We are a new creation in Christ Jesus.
"become worse before the day of resurrection, than we were before receiving the Holy Spirit" ??? How is that even possible ???
The Holy Spirit works within each and every born again believer, producing spiritual fruit within the believer, setting the fruit of the Spirit against the desires of the flesh and over time the believer desires the fruit of the Spirit more than the fleshly desires and the fleshly desires melt away. This is a maturing process. We start out as newborn babes desiring the sincere milk of the Word that we may grow thereby. As we grow, the things we enjoyed before we were born again do not hold the same appeal to us.
1 Peter 1:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
vs 4 – our inheritance is incorruptible ... it does not fade away ... it is reserved in heaven for us.
vs 5 – we are kept by the power of God. He is faithful and I believe He will keep me.
God keeping me does not mean I sit idle ... He does tell us He created us unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. The only "good works" though are the "works" wrought in us by the Holy Spirit
... that fruit we are to hold out to all with whom we come into contact ... love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faith, temperance ... who doesn’t like a little of that in their life???
... speak God's Word to all we meet ... someone doesn't like you because you tell them God's Word??? Jesus warns us we will be hated for His name's sake so don't be shocked when God's Word is rejected but don't stop speaking.
... love one another ... if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
If we find it grievous to do those things God would have us do, we might want to do a checkup from the neck up to see if we have been drawn away from Him ...
.
... a simple "no, I did not read 1 Corinthians chapters 1 - 3" would have sufficed.
