I was walking to work this week when it hit me. I had been having a conversation with a friend earlier in the week about my opinions on what trust was and how it manifests itself in our lives. We had discussed the Spirit, beliefs and action. As I walked to work, it hit me.
No one can take His Spirit from me. If the whole world decided to team up against me, if every believer on earth decided that I was a hypocrite, if every unbeliever on earth decided to simply torture me, if they gathered all the wild horses they could find and somehow devised a way to hitch them up to the Holy Spirit within me, they couldn’t pull Him out of me. He is pretty stuck in me, and it doesn’t really matter what the people around me would like to do about it or believe about it. He is here to stay.
It was one of those revelations that is theologically obvious and that I have known for years, but like all revelations the revolution they inspire comes from applying them in another area of our lives or to another layer of our pain. I was in desperate need of realizing that God trusts me.
Wait! God trusts me?
No, He doesn’t trust me. That would be foolish; but He has stuck His Spirit inside of me, and He does trust His Spirit. People will give up on me, but God never will. God is the one that truly believes in me.
Wait! God believes in me?
No, He doesn’t believe in me. That would be really foolish. He stuck His Spirit inside of me. That is why He always has full confidence that no matter how far I have fallen, no matter how unforgiving I have been, no matter how I have been beat up, I can always get up. God knows that. He knows that His Spirit within me is more than enough to raise me from the dead.
I have been pretty dead. Like the door nail kind of dead. Do they say that in these parts? Deader than a door nail? I wonder what makes the door nail dead?
Sin made me dead. Really dead. I suppose that one is either dead or not dead. There can’t really be degrees of dead. Dead is dead is dead is dead, I think.
It was a massive relief for me to realize how incredibly safe I am within God’s grace. Romans 5 says:
Therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
I think all the spiritual breakthroughs that have any significance to me for the rest of my life will simply be realizing how safe I am in His grace. That immense relief I feel when I realize “Oh, His grace covers that too” is life transforming.
It was an immense relief to once again apply to my life the truth that what anyone thinks about my spirituality doesn’t really matter. Give me Christ and Him alone. On Him the solid rock I’ll stand. You cannot take Him from me.
You cannot take Him from me. I am so glad. Because we might disagree or fight or not really like each other. You can take all my money, my food, my home, my clothes. You could throw me into prison, beat me to pulp or stone me to death. But you will never be able to take my God from me no matter how hard you try. You could apply all the science in the world to that problem. Every brainiac on earth could be on your side helping you, but in the end I would still have my God.
Oh, my morning was so much better when I realized that!
This is off topic, but I just wanted to share this. The favorite thing anyone has said to me today is this, “I just wanted to praise Him. I mean that is what Gods are for – to praise.”
And it isn’t that we create the one, true God in our minds or use Him for our purposes, and that is not what the person speaking meant. It was about our position to God. I exist to praise Him. That is what He created me for. Is there anything more exciting to praise Him about than that I will always be with Him? Not “until death” but through it?
What God has joined together let no one separate.
Is His Spirit in you? Do you believe that your relationship with God is safe from the harsh criticism of the world around you? Do you know that belief in Christ Jesus will keep you eternally safe from God’s wrath? Do you live like you know it?
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