Hope from the Word of God

^{Hope for 2014 from the Word of God.
Abiding faith, hope and love   
Written and posted by Jean-Louis.}
 
Abiding Faith 1 John 2:24-29
Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.
²⁵ And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.
²⁶ These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you.
²⁷ But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.
²⁸ And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.
²⁹ If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.

Hope 1 John 3:1-3
Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
² Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
³ And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

Romans 15:12,13  
Again Isaiah says,

“There shall come the root of Jesse,
And He who arises to rule over the Gentiles,
In Him shall the Gentiles hope.”

¹³ Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This hope that the Bible talks about belongs only to those who have believed in and received Jesus-Christ as Lord and Savior. 

If you do not know the Lord Jesus, have not experienced his love, mercy and grace, I invite you, I plead with you now to make your peace with the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and receive his Salvation through His Son Jesus-Christ. 

We all know what the conditions of the world have been in 2014. You know your personal situation. Money won´t save you, politicians won´t save you, guns won´t save you, running and hiding somewhere else thinking you are out of danger won´t save you, belief in any religion, in your own human goodness and performing good works wont´save you, belief in reincarnation and acquiring good karma won´t save you. I am talking about your immortal soul.  

When we die, and nobody knows the hour, we all have to give an account about our lives. The Bible says: It is given for man to die once and then comes the judgment. 
The ones that have accepted the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross to pay for the just punishment for their sins and put their trust in Jesus-Christ will live eternally in resurrected spiritual glorious bodies in the presence of God whom they love, worship and serve.

The others who have rejected the offer of salvation from a loving but just God available to all will be resurrected also but will suffer eternal separation from God and eternal conscious torment in hell (the lake of fire) in the presence of satan and his demons. They have brought it upon themselves because of their own choice to rebel against their loving Creator who has demonstrated his love for his creation from the beginning of time.

From all we can see in the world today and from the Bible prophecies that have never failed concerning the near future, we can only expect the world in which we live to spin out of greater control if not for divine intervention. 

God has already intervened on your behalf 2000 years ago and provided the way to be reconciled with your Creator. 

If you feel hopeless in this dying world and want to know the way to be reconciled with God, this is what Jesus the Son of God said in the Gospel of John 3
  
Jesus Teaches Nicodemus
1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. ² He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
³ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.^[a]”
⁴ “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit^[b] gives birth to spirit. ⁷ You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You^[c] must be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”^[d]
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
¹⁰ “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? ¹¹ Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. ¹² I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.^{[e] 14} Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,^{[f] 15} that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”^[g]

Love   
John 3:16 reads:
¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

John 1:1-13 speaking about Jesus the Son of God, the Word of God, the Light of the world, the giver of life abundant and eternal,the Savior of mankind:

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

² The same was in the beginning with God.
³ All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
⁴ In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
⁵ And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
⁶ There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
⁷ The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
⁸ He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
⁹ That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
¹¹ He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
¹² But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
¹³ Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

John 14:6;  Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

I am praying for you who read this and are overburdened and feeling condemned by the weight of your sins without any hope of finding a way out of your predicament, whatever it is, that you would seriously and sincerely consider the above Scriptures and humbly ask the LORD God to help you, to come to your rescue, to reveal to you the Truth of his Word and to let him transform your heart, your mind and give you an abundant life that satisfies in the now and the hereafter. 

Isaiah 57:15 reads: For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Click here Psalm 51. A broken and Contrite Heart  and  HERE  to read my own testimony as the result of God´s intervention in rescuing me from the New Age Movement.

For a more thorough explanation of the Gospel "the good news" of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life click HERE  and for how to be born again HERE      

Can Good Works Prove Salvation?

Reblogged from  http://www.gracelife.org/
By Dr. Charles C. Bing GraceLife Ministries

There is every reason to think that those who have believed in Jesus Christ as Savior and are consequently born into God's family will experience a changed life to some degree. Some would say that this changed life is evidenced by good works which proves they are saved. If that is true, then the converse is true: if there are no good works, then there is no salvation. In this view, good works (sometimes called "fruit" or evidence of a changed life) prove or disprove one's eternal salvation.

Some passages are used to contend that works can prove or disprove one's eternal salvation. Probably the most common are James 2:14-26, John 15:6, and Matthew 7:15-20. But James is writing to Christians about the usefulness of their faith, not its genuineness. Likewise, in John 15:6 Jesus is talking about fruitless believers and compares them to branches that are burned, in other words, not of much use. Matthew 7:15-20 warns against false prophets (not believers in general) who can be evaluated on the basis of their evil deeds or heretical teaching (not an absence of works in general).

Can Good Works Prove Salvation?

There is no passage of Scripture that claims works can prove salvation. In fact, there are many problems with trying to use works to prove salvation, or the lack of works to disprove salvation.

• Good works can characterize non-Christians. Works in and of themselves can not prove that anyone is eternally saved because those who have not believed in Christ will often do good things. In fact, good deeds are essential to many non-Christian religions. Sometimes the outward morality of non-Christians exceeds that of established Christians. In Matthew 7:21-23 we see the possibility of those who do not know Christ doing great works, but their works are useless in demonstrating their salvation; they are not saved.
• Good works can be hard to define. Though we might define a good work as something done by a Christian through the Spirit for the Lord, how can we always know when that is true? It is hard to imagine even a single day when a Christian (or non-Christian, for that matter) would not do something good like go to work to provide for a family, hold a door for someone, or brake for a squirrel. How can we know when these things are done through the Spirit and for the Lord, especially if they can be done by non-Christians?
• Good works are relative. While a person's behavior may seem excessive, it may actually demonstrate great progress in that person's Christian growth. A man slips with a curse word that startles other believers, but those believers do not know that before his conversion, curse words flowed freely. The amount of fruit must be considered in the context of one's total past life, a difficult thing to do. It may also be relative to the amount of sin in one's present life. For example, if a Christian were to commit adultery, we might focus our thinking on that sin so that we ignore the other good things he is doing.
• Good works can be passive in nature. The fruit of salvation is not always what we do, but often what we do not do. As a Christian, one may no longer get drunk or may refrain from yelling at an inconsiderate motorist. This fruit of the Spirit, self-control, may not be detected by others because of its passive nature.
• Good works can be unseen. In Matthew 6:1-6 Jesus told his followers to give and pray in secret rather than publicly. A person who never prays in a group may breathe a prayer while driving and no one will ever know. Another may not attend church, but give regularly to a Christian charity. These are works that go unobserved by others.
• Good works can be deceptive. Since we can not know one's motives, a seeming good work could be done for the wrong reason. A person might give money to a church to impress others. Another might volunteer to work with church children only to wait for an opportunity to sexually abuse them. These are not actually good works at all! Motives are difficult to discern, even for the doer, but God knows each person's heart (1 Cor. 4:3-5).
• Good works can be inconsistent. The Bible allows the possibility of believers who begin well, but fall away from their walk with the Lord or fall into sin (1 Cor. 11:30; 2 Tim. 4:10; James 5:19-20). If a Christian shows the evidence of a changed life, but later falls away, at what point in their life do we examine them to prove or disprove their salvation? If there can be lapses in good works, how long does the lapse continue before one is judged as never saved?

Conclusion

Nowhere does the Bible teach that fruit or good works can prove one's eternal salvation. Since the fruit of good works is not easily discerned or quantified, it cannot be reliable proof of salvation. The subjective nature of measuring one's fruit creates the impossibility of knowing objectively whether someone is saved. The amount of fruit necessary to please one Christian "fruit inspector" may not please the next "fruit inspector." As Christians, we are created in Jesus Christ to do good works (Eph. 2:10) and expected to do good works (1 Tim. 6:18; Titus 2:7, 14; Heb. 10:24), but good works are never attached to the condition for salvation, which is faith alone in Christ alone (Rom. 4:4-5). While good works can be corroborating evidence for one's faith in Christ, they are not sufficient to prove or disprove it. Only faith in God's promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ guarantees and proves our salvation.

The woman at the well

Written and posted by Jean-Louis.
Jesus talks with the Samaritan woman John 4

People generally tend to divide themselves into two categories in their approach to and attitudes towards life. Some say they are optimists, others declare themselves as pessimists.The optimists in order to illustrate the superiority of their position give the analogy of the glass. They say somewhat proudly: “we, optimists see the glass half full while the pessimist’s point of view is to see it half empty”.

  I would tend to credit the optimist with being closer to reality because if we agree that the container is not as important as the water, at least the optimist can drink out of his full half while the pessimist is going to have a hard time drinking out of his empty half of the glass which is filled with air! Really, both parties end up with only half a glass, whether empty or full.

I suggest a third position, that of a truly thirsty person. The man or woman who is really thirsty doesn’t have the time to philosophize about the full or half capacity of the container. They know that what is going to quench their thirst is not really the glass or the sense of superiority experienced when comparing attitudes, but the substance contained in it in response to the intensity and urgency of their need.

Give them what they need so desperately and they will find a way to drink, whether it be right out of the faucet, out of their cupped hands, out of a bottle, on their knees lapping at the cool refreshing stream or in whatever way possible.

If we turn to John chapter 4 telling the story of the Samaritan woman, we can see a woman perplexed when told by Jesus that He can give her living water. Her reaction is to say: “How can you give me water when you don’t have a container?” This reaction is typical of the natural mind’s logic. Jesus here in order to illustrate a spiritual point departs from a physical need common to all and understandable by all. With the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, He points out to the woman that while she might be satisfied until the next time she is thirsty, she will have to come back to the well and draw some more water. Until now, she was concentrating on the outward things, the container without which Jesus couldn’t draw water, the increased difficulty caused by the depth of the well, her own unbelief as she probably thought: “what kind of a man is this that pretend to do things that are physically impossible”.

Isn’t that the position that we sometimes take even when we know and have tasted of the living water of the Spirit? Jesus first had to show the woman two things that she needed in order to have eternal life:

• First, the gift of God, new life in the Spirit and,
• Second, the giver of life, both present in the person of Jesus the Son of God, the creator  and source  of all life.

What is the response of the woman even before Jesus tells her about herself things that he couldn’t have known as an ordinary human being? Her response was that of a thirsty woman. Notice that at this point, she is not talking or concerned about the container anymore. Rather she cries out: “give me the water”. She has taken her eyes off the physical, natural realm with its limitations, impossibilities and turned them to the one whose gifts are beyond and far better than his creation, she has acknowledged, accepted her need and welcomed the means to fill it.

She herself has become the earthly container ready to be filled; she is about to go through the door that separates the natural life from the spiritual life.

The Lord Jesus himself is the divine, holy, pure, perfect container out of which flows the eternal, inexhaustible, spiritual, life giving, overflowing stream of living water who satisfies those who are thirsty and humbly express their need to be filled.

The world might have what seems like very clever ways and pretentiously wise views of looking at life and things, but God’s perspective is always better, wiser and goes beyond even the best perspective of man such as the optimist’s half full glass.

The optimist sees his cup half full, the pessimist sees it half empty, but our Lord wants His children to see themselves as neither, but as yielded vessels thirsty for the living water of the Spirit so that He might fill them up to overflowing with abundant life to share with and bless others with showing them the way to find the fountain of living waters.

Jean-Louis.