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 THE PERSEVERANCE OF FAITH

Following Jesus Christ as Lord of life will mean giving up what we'll eventually lose to receive something imperishable and assured - eternal Life in Him.

Luke 14:27 "And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be My disciple." 

This is self-surrender that perseveres in following Jesus Christ because His promises give us absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen. He has promised that, having begun to do a good work in us, causing us to live into the salvation and Life He has given to us AND is now living out within us, HE will bring that good work to completion by the Day of Christ. 

Believing God and acting on His Word, faith, is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance of things we cannot now see. (Hebrews 11:1) Our hope is grounded in the Word of God. Faith is the response of, "Yes!" to the promises of God. That's why Paul states in Romans 10:17 that faith comes from hearing God's Word. We can have no faith without hearing and receiving God's Word. Faith is the response of "I believe you, God, to the point that I will follow You and trust You to do in me all Your have promised to me in Christ Jesus." Your faith is the evidence that what God has said will come to pass.

We are saying that we believe God will transform our lives. We believe that He will become Life within us; that He IS Life in us. He will cause us to become all He intended when He called us to Himself to become a new creation in Christ. Just like a baby grows up to become all it is, even so God has destined that we will be conformed to the Image of Christ.

Ephesians 1:13-14 "And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, He identified you as His own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom He promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that He will give us the inheritance He promised and that He has purchased us to be His own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify Him."

Ephesians 1:4 "Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes."

2 Corinthians 3:18 "And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, Who is the Spirit."

We are being conformed to His image day by day as we follow Him, carrying our own cross. The cross we bear tells us every moment and every second that we are not and never will be our own salvation to any degree whatsoever. Anyone who saw a person carrying a cross under Roman rule knew that that person was not coming back. 

Following Jesus Christ takes us away from who we once were, never to be that person again. We are being transformed by the power of Jesus' Resurrection, by the Holy Spirit being life within us. The old has passed away and all things are new by the Holy Spirit. That is why God says through St. Paul that we are "new creations." Daily we are, by His grace and power, becoming more of who we are in Him.

I had an old pastor tell me when I was 19 years old (54 years ago) that I would lose NOTHING of what the Lord had done or would do in me. But...by God's grace, through the power of bearing that cross daily, I could rest assured that I would lose everything God hadn't done in me. As Eugene Peterson said, "it's a long obedience in the same direction."

Grace to persevere is His gift of hope.

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