When I sent it to my friend, I started thinking of all of
the ways that we can doubt our own salvation and healing, that we can start to
doubt the salvation of others or judge whether they are saved or not, and that
it is only God who can know the truth of each one of our hearts and if He has
begun that good work, He will complete it. It’s not up to us – I shared with my
friend that my favorite verse is Ephesians 2:8, “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.” It really is not up to us at all – the
only thing we can do is choose to say yes or no, but other than that, once we
have been called and we’ve said yes, He’ll finish what He started.
Sometimes the way God works in our lives is through the very
things that have been challenges to us before. At just the right time, when He
knows we are ready to go through something with His help – it is always with
His help because He has promised never to leave us or forsake us – at just the
right time He will take us through something that in the past we thought had
power over us – it could be a person or a thing or an experience – and He’ll
show us that it never did. The interesting that that happens – interesting more
when we get on the other side of it and sometimes really stressful when we are
going through it – is that the closer we get to being healed of whatever that
thing or person or experience from the past is, the harder it seems to face it
this time with God. It’s in those moments right before the breakthrough and
victory that we can often feel like the defeat of everything that we had hoped
for is coming. That is one of the strategies of the enemy – if he can just get
us to give up before we have the blessing that God has promised to us we won’t
walk into the Promised Land.
It is very similar with faith about our own salvation. When
we are saved, we are saved, and that’s all there is to it. God called us, we
answered, sometimes after a long struggle or many years of trying to do things
our own way – this was my case so I am speaking for myself here – and when we
finally answered, the revelation of who God is in our lives and the feeling of
why didn’t I do that sooner?! is so powerful that it would seem impossible to
forget or disbelieve the miracle that occurred because we experienced it personally.
And yet over time, and time and time again, we can fall into the trap the enemy
sets for us and start believing the lie that nothing has changed and that we
are the same as we always were. And often just when we are going to walk into a
new victory, just when we are about to shed a layer of some negative experience
from the past, just when we are about to move to another level of faith, the
enemy will send something to make us think that we have not been miraculously
changed.
Often in those times I find myself saying to God – “It’s the
same!” meaning that the situation I am dealing with is the same thing I’ve
dealt with before. It may be different people, it may be a different place, it
may be on the outside completely different in many aspects, but at the core it
is the same, and when I start to see that and say that, He reminds me that though
the situation may be the same on the surface, the real core is different
because He’s at my core now, and that means that my core is solid as a rock.
In Matthew 7:24-25, Jesus says, “Therefore everyone who
hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who
built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the
winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had
been founded on the rock.” It is the hearing first, and then the acting that
builds that house with a strong foundation, it is the faith that comes as a
gift, the acceptance of that gift, and then the action of following His
teaching that produces the good work within us.
Once we have said yes, our job is to continue to follow, to
keep saying yes even when sometimes we feel like saying no. There are times
when we may be facing something that we say I can’t go through that again, but
when we keep listening and trusting, and accepting of the gift of His presence
in our lives, we will understand that once He’s begun His good work in us,
everything else He will do will always be good, and He will complete all of His
good work in us.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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