E99 - Hope’s Harbor Gritty Bible Devotions - Causes & Effects of Salvation - The Missing Effect - Part 4
Hope’s Harbor
Gritty Bible Devotions
Episode #99
Title: The Missing Effect
Date: March 27, 2023
Contact: info@hopesharbor.net
Key verses: Romans 8:16 – ‘The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.’
Galatians 3:26 – ‘For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.’
Intro: The missing effect of salvation that I neglected in the episodes on Causes and Effects of Salvation is the effect of becoming a child of GOD and what that involves. And what I mean is what we gained when we were born again into GOD’s family.
My neglect stemmed from a male tendency to focus more on technique and processes instead of relationship aspects. It never crossed my mind while writing the notes for this series to include the ultimate effect, benefit, and blessing of salvation. Salvation is not the end-all, but rather a gateway to our restoration to GOD. We are reconciled back to GOD through Jesus’s death when He paid the penalty we owed for our sins.
GOD used to walk with Adam in the Garden of Eden. But when Adam sinned the first thing he did was hide from GOD. The human race has been hiding ever since.
Devotion focus: Our relationship to GOD as our Father.
Listen, if you didn’t have a loving father, I know how hard it can be to envision GOD loving you. I never had the love of a father and it left a void, one I’ve tried to fill my entire life and I turned 68 recently.
The reason I did this series on understanding the causes and effects of salvation was and is intended to bless you with confidence in your eternal safety. But salvation goes so very far beyond this. I’ll tell you right now those words don’t exist to fully describe all that’s waiting for us in Heaven.
Instead of trying to describe Heaven in an attempt to encourage you, please allow me to try and explain my understanding of the relationship with GOD. A relationship waiting for us through not only a study of GOD’s word by an experience of GOD Himself.
First, there is the legal standing we have as children of GOD. Our relationship based on being GOD’s child is safe. Nothing can ever come between us. This means you and I can go to GOD assured He is pleased with our company.
Second, our relationship on the personal level is such that we can and must experience GOD. We do this by spending time with GOD in His Word. In John chapter 1, verse 1, Jesus is called ‘the Word.’
Listen to John 1:1 – ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’
Jesus is the personification of GOD through His Word and this is where many of us, me included, miss the link to GOD. We go about learning about GOD but don’t know GOD on a personal level. It’s similar to learning all about a famous person, but never meeting that person. I knew a lot about President Reagan, but never sat and had coffee with him.
To know about GOD is important. As with any friend we want to know about them. Does it go without saying if an attempt at friendship ended with knowledge alone, there isn’t a real friendship? I know, it’s a rhetorical question.
So why are we so content with knowledge alone and not experience GOD in any real way? Let me first, by way of reminder, say that understanding as much as possible the causes and effects of salvation is meant to give you confidence GOD wants you and me to know Him at a personal, deep level of experience.
If I had understood salvation more fully early on, I would not have spent years fearing GOD as a cosmic killjoy, just waiting to ‘get David.’ The unhealthy fear I had of GOD came from preachers in churches I was taken to as a child. They used fear as a tactic to get people to obey GOD.
Now, we should fear GOD in a way of reverence and any obedience rendered should come from our love for GOD.
It took years of listening to the teachings of men like Charles Stanley, Chuck Swindoll, and reading the works of D. L. Moody, R. A. Torrey, Oswald Chambers, and A. W. Tozer, before I dared believe that Almighty GOD would actually love me, not from duty, but from desire.
This process involved in my discovery of GOD’s personal love for me was orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. It culminated sometime during 2004 I think it was when I came across John 15:9 - "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.” I’m sure I read that verse before, probably several times, but this time, a single word jumped out at me. When Jesus said, “As the Father loved me…” I looked up the word ‘as’ in Strong’s Concordance. It means just as, according to, even as. Just one word and everything about my belief in GOD’s love shifted.
Here’s where I hope to encourage you if you’ve never experienced on an emotional level the realization that GOD loves you, yes you. Don’t look around to see who I mean. You are mentioned in the Bible. Right there, in John 15:9.
Let me read a portion of it again, “I also have loved you…” That’s you, beloved.
Is it hard to believe? For me, it took about 18 months after coming across the AS, of reading that verse first thing each morning and last thing every night, before it blossomed into reality, into an emotional experience. Since that time I rest in the truth of GOD’s love, even though at times I wonder at how it’s possible, knowing myself as I do.
I want to reinforce the grand effect and wonder of being GOD’s child through salvation by reading a verse in Romans, chapter 8, verse 1.
Romans 8:1 – ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.’
On a side note, this verse comes after Paul described his distress at his sinful nature and the frustration of trying to live free from sin. He asked in Romans 7:24, ‘Who will deliver me from this body of death?’ This question may be taken as wondering how to be free from the presence of sin. and also as how to be delivered from the penalty of sin’s condemnation. He goes on to say in part, in Romans 7:25, ‘I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!...’
So then, Romans 8:1 reveals that through Jesus there is no condemnation from sin and that the evidence you are living free from condemnation is you will walk, or live, in the ways of the Holy Spirit. Walking in the Spirit is an effect of there being no condemnation and not the cause. If walking in the Spirit was the cause of not being condemned, this would be a works-based salvation and not of grace.
Listen to Eph 2:8 & 9 as Paul refutes the heresy of having to work, or earn, our salvation and freedom from condemnation: ‘ For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.’
Carefully consider this fact: we are free from the need to earn GOD’s forgiveness and/or acceptance. We are forgiven and accepted through Jesus and His sacrifice and through faith on our part and Jesus’s death on GOD’s part, He adopts us as children.
The effect of adoption should be that we rest in GOD’s loving acceptance of us, and our belief that we can know GOD personally. The choice is up to you, whether to believe and take the next step. You can do this by reading your Bible through the focus of prayerfully seeking in your soul to experience GOD.
Summary: The greatest effect of salvation is the fact we are now GOD’s children. As such we have a relationship with GOD that we may pursue, even if we come to GOD being a long-lost child. GOD is waiting on you, His beloved one. To get a picture of what this looks like read Luke 15:11-32. It’s the parable/story of the prodigal son.
Action to consider: Read A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of GOD. If you will take to heart the teachings in that book, it will change how you understand GOD’s desire for you to know Him
Next week’s devotion: Attributes of GOD – What Makes Him Great