Strength comes from God when we are His children. This devotional reading looks at how God’s love for us provides us strength.
Nuggets
- God loves us so much that He sent His Son to pay the price of our sins.
- We need to choose to accept God’s love in order to have our names written in the book of life to avoid judgment.
The first four books of the New Testament are called the gospels. They tell of Jesus’ mission to save us from our sins.
We find strength in God only when we accept Jesus as our Savior.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the Commit to Grow Our Habits study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this devotion is from Clifford’s sermon.
Resource
The headings are Clifford’s word.
From the Assurance that the Love of God is a Real Gospel for Each Human Soul
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I Jn. 4: 9-10 ESV)
God loves us so much that He sent His Son to pay the price of our sins.
We don’t know how long it took before Adam and Eve committed the original sin. It could have been 100 years. It could have been ten hours.
We do know that Adam was 130 years old when Seth was born. He was the first of Adam’s children to be born after sin had entered the world. “And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth” (Gen. 5: 3 ESV).
Fun fact. Cain, Abel, and Seth were the only named children of Adam, but we know he and Eve had other children. “And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters” (Gen. 5: 4 ESV).
The original sin was disobeying God. He told them not to do something, and they went ahead and did it.
We probably would have taken our dolls and gone home, never to associated with them again.
God didn’t do that. Instead, He devised a plan so that our relationships with Him could be restored.
That shows how loving and kind God is. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5: 8 NIV).
Spurgeon made a great point. It isn’t that it is saying there was a possibility we could have loved God first.
What Spurgeon was saying was that there was no way we could. We can’t love God with an unregenerated heart. Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
Resource
Glossary
God sent His Son Jesus to be the propitiation for our sin. Propitiation means that a substitute is offered so we may avoid God’s wrath.
Yeah, instead of showing anger, God shows us love.
Kind of buried in this verse is an important reminder: “… so that we might live through him” (I Jn. 4: 9 ESV). Yes, we are told we are going to live, but it is only through Jesus.
Merry explained the live. He wrote, “That which the apostle here means by ‘life,’ is happy existence — existence in connection with the highest and fullest development of all our powers, both of perception and enjoyment; existence in the possession of the Divine [favor] and love, moral rectitude, and internal purity. A life is it whose [vigor] no power of disease can undermine, whose actings are superior to waste and fatigue, whose duration is lasting as Jehovah.”
Resource
We can’t stop at the happy existence in the first sentence. Don’t make this a worldview happy. It isn’t talking about always enjoying life and living it to our worldview fullest.
Merry said that it is based on “… existence in the possession of the Divine [favor] and love, moral rectitude, and internal purity.” We can only be truly happy when we are a child of God’s
Glossary
This happiness is based on God’s love for us. God pours out His love on us.
Isn’t that wonderful? We do not have to fix ourselves — which we can’t do — in order to gain salvation. Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
Glossary
We have to make sure we understand God’s love for us. God’s love toward us depends on Him, not us.
It has nothing to do with our awareness of that love. It isn’t based on our feeling it.
God flat out loves us. I liked when Beecher said that love is God’s continuing state. He is never out of love.
Martin had some great insight. Elaine-speak. So many times, we say God doesn’t love us because we only see it tied to events, circumstances, and time.
Resource
Our perception is faulty, not His love.
God showers His love upon us to give us life — including eternal life.
Think about it this way. God knew He was going to create the universe and us to live in it.
But even when that was still just a plan, God knew we were going to disobey Him. He knew we were going to reject Him.
God made us anyway. Not only that, He designed the Plan of Salvation then — before the original sin occurred — before He created Adam and Eve.
That is love.
From the Conviction that We Are Living in a World of Persons Spiritually Related to the Father, and Immediately Responsible to His Judgment
“And have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3: 10 ESV)
We need to choose to accept God’s love in order to have our names written in the book of life to avoid judgment.
But what does that have to do with engaging our strength to commit to God?
With all that love God is showering down on us, we gain strength. Basking in that love gives us peace and contentment, giving us strength.
Robertson put it this way. “Love is its own perennial fount of strength. The strength of affection is a proof not of the worthiness of the object, but of the largeness of the soul which loves. Love descends, not ascends.”
Resource
We need this strength because we are new creations after ABCDing.
True, non-believers are made in the image of God. However, when we become children of God, our attributes become more like His. The problem is that we are still in the world. We are becoming sanctified, but we are still sinful.
Glossary
Non-believers choose not to seek Jesus’ salvation. They choose not to submit to God.
Ultimately, that choice will lead to judgment. “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done” (Rev. 20: 12-13 ESV).
Making the Connections
I love what Gibbon had to say. He wrote, “The love of God is not a public spectacle. Love is not a material thing, that all can see alike.”
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Jesus wasn’t a Save the Animals, Defeat Poverty, Defeat Global Warming kind of guy. He wasn’t out to make a big spectacle showing He was going to save the physical world.
Instead, Jesus is interested in a personal, intimate relationship. Remember, He wants us to go into our war room. “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt. 6: 6 ESV).
How Do We Apply This?
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17)
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3)
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16)
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11)
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2)
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11)
Father God. We thank You that You planned a way for us to gain forgiveness for our sins. Thank You for loving us. Help us to choose to avoid judgment so that we can see Jesus. Amen.
What do you think?
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