We live in the age of exposure. Lives unfold in public view, privacy has come to seem quaint, and authenticity reigns as the highest virtue. Post by post, like by like, we have embraced a culture that equates transparency with honesty and self-expression with truth. Be yourself. Speak your truth. These function now as first commandments.
Beloved, have you ever thought about the difference between God preserving us and our perseverance? When we understand the difference, this can bring great comfort to the Saints, because our perseverance does not rest in our own strength. Or the ability to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. It rests in the faithfulness of God. The Bible teaches us that every true believer is preserved by God. And, because God preserves His people, they will persevere to the very end. We remain faithful because our God is faithful. Our perseverance is not the cause of our salvation; it is the evidence that God is preserving us.
Brothers and Sisters, sometimes I think we forget just how much we need the gospel every single day. We tend to think the gospel is mainly for those who have not come to Christ yet. Those who need the gospel to be saved. They certainly do and we should pray for the lost and tell sinners there is forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus Christ. However, sometimes we act as though the gospel got us through the front door. Now it is up to us to navigate the rest of the house. Beloved, that is just not true.
Have you ever felt as though your burdens were too small to bring before God because surely He has greater things to worry about? I do this way more than I’d like to admit.
Psalm 147 gently corrects that thinking. The God who upholds the universe never has to choose between governing galaxies and comforting His children. He does both perfectly.
One of our great comforts we have is knowing that our salvation does not rest upon the strength of our grip on Christ, but upon Christ's grip on us. There is an important difference between God's preservation and our perseverance, and understanding that difference can bring tremendous peace to our hearts. Because God preserves His people, we are able to persevere. Those two truths always belong together. Preservation is God's work. Perseverance is the believer's response. Yet even our perseverance is made possible by the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
Ever wondered why our Bible contains just sixty-six books? Why do we have Genesis through Revelation? Why not the Apocrypha or other ancient religious books? That is a good question, and it deserves a good answer. The answer is not that a group of men sat around a table one day and decided what books they liked the best. Neither did a church council create the Bible. God did, and that is where we must begin.