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 ONLY ONE WAY TO VICTORY

1 John 5:1-5
"Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves His children, too. 2 We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey His commandments. 3 Loving God means keeping His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. 4 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. 5 And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God."

Those who do not believe there is a spiritual war going on all around them have had the wool pulled over their eyes. The "world" is vying for your loyalty, devotion and commitment in order to keep you separated from the Love of God that alone can restore you to wholeness and peace.

The things the world system promises will fulfill you, give your life meaning, value, and purpose will never actually produce what they advertise. Education cannot change your heart and nature. The accumulation of money and stuff cannot make you secure. The accolades of others will never be enough to give you any lasting peace. The world's system to seduce and enslave a person are based on the craving of physical pleasure, the strong desire for everything we see, and pride in one's achievements or possessions.
With those "idols" ruling your life, your imagination, your motivation, your sense of being, there is no room for real life.

Real life comes from the Giver of Life. Becoming fully human is the singular result of surrendering all of life to Jesus Christ, believing Him, trusting in what He has done for you to be restored to a living relationship with God. The salvaging of a human life can only be done by God. When you are spiritually dead and enslaved by this world system, sin is normative. Sin never restored anyone to wholeness, never healed a broken heart, never provided a peace that was not connected to human effort and the delusion that "I'm OK." Sin never saved anyone, just the opposite.

Believing the Lord God and what He has done in love to rescue and restore humanity through the Life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, and His sending the Holy Spirit to give one the power to really live a new Life is what it means to live a life of faith. Faith is the confidence that God has told you the truth that He loves you and surrendering all you are to Him. It's a turning from the world's deception of sin and addiction to self. It's turning to Him to receive forgiveness for all your folly and to receive His forgiveness and gift of eternal life.

The battle is won, not by achieving, but by believing. It is the abandoning of every false way of trying to obtain love and believing that God has told you the truth. That Truth is revealed in His Word, the Bible. It revels our desperate condition of being spiritually and thus essentially dead in sin and rebellion (living as though God really doesn't matter in my day-to-day existence). The Bible also reveals that God has done for us that very thing that is impossible for us to accomplish. God made a way, in Jesus Christ, for us to be forgiven and restore to God as sons and daughters.

We live on a planet that is at war, spiritual war. Victory in this conflict comes only by God, by believing and receiving His promises in Christ Jesus.

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