Where reason cannot wade there faith may swim. —Thomas Watson
Where does faith come from? One of the things I want you to understand is that faith is a gift from God. He gives us the desire and the reason (mind) to believe. That’s grace.
Read 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24. God brings you to faith and He helps you grow in your walk with Jesus Christ. Think about where you’re at in your relationship with Jesus. What would the next level look like?
Paul makes a decisive observation in verse 24 – “He who called you is faithful, and he will do it.” In other words, God wants you to grow in your relationship with Jesus. That is God’s passionate desire. Isn’t that encouraging? It is God’s perfect competence which helps us become holy. We trust Him for the grace to forgive our sins, so we should trust Him to help us overcome them and grow into better people. God is faithful…He will do it.
Read 2 Timothy 1:8-12. He called you with a holy calling. In your relationship with Jesus, you are getting better each and every day. And this is God’s doing. Every step of your salvation is rooted in every God-given step that has gone before.
Let these words from Ephesians 1:4 guide your prayer time;
God chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and blameless before him in love.
What does it mean for you to know how much God desires your holiness? Thank God for making that happen in your life right now…
Good points, Romans chapters 5 and 6 go well with this post. Faith is from God, but that doesn’t give us the right to live as though He never gave us a law to obey. We are to be “slaves to righteousness”.
I think one of the most important themes in this post is the question you pose: “Think about where you’re at in your relationship with Jesus. What would the next level look like?” We all need to take this question seriously and examine what it means in our own lives.