God Is for Us

Our Redeemer proclaimed in John 14:6 (NKJV), “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Not only does he want us to know this with every ounce of our being, but he wants us to live this reality every moment of each day. He wants us to know the joy of loving God through him, but many of us are so weighted down by our struggles, fears, and pain that we feel we’ve lost the path to joy, and we don’t believe we can find it. We absolutely can, and it begins with having more faith in the love of God. Throughout our lives, we’ve learned to mourn, hold grudges, and hold on to regrets, anger, fears, and the sting of disappointment and past mistakes. We’ve learned to never live in the present, but to always stay focused on the past or on the future. This means that our arms are always either reaching back or trying to reach forward, but not reaching up to the Source of our strength, love, and power. In Matthew 6:24, Jesus Christ said no one can serve two masters. To serve is to give attention to, and our Master Jesus is letting us know that we’re not built for duality. We can’t focus on two things at the same time, and this is a tremendous lesson for our faith walk. Faith demands that our focus and attention is always on God as we follow the example of Christ. Just as we learned to devote our focus on pain, sadness, disappointment, and fear, we must learn to focus our entire being on the joy, victory, peace, and faith of Jesus Christ. By changing our focus, we allow God to wash away the trauma of hurts, anxieties, and insecurities. We must be willing to open the door of new beginnings and to welcome it in our lives. God will not force us to do this, because love never forces its own way. He stands at the door of our hearts knocking, and we must trust that allowing Him to come in is the greatest thing we will ever do for our lives.

n Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV), Heavenly Father told His people living during Old Testament times, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” This verse allows us to know that people living during those times lacked faith and needed assurance of God’s provision, grace, and love. They were not convinced that God is mindful of us, and that He cares about every detail of our existences. Like many living today, they might have assumed that God was going to leave them to fend for themselves or that He didn’t have a purpose and plan for their lives. He sets the record straight in Jeremiah 29:11 and does so in a way that reinforces His absolute sovereignty and authority. He needs no help to be who He is. His thoughts are infinitely higher than our thoughts, and His plan for us is drenched in His goodness, perfection, and love. During Old Testament times, God’s people were servants. They were not sons and daughters the way that you and I are. Jesus Christ had not yet come to the earth; therefore, it wasn’t possible for them to be born again. To become born again through Jesus Christ is to accept the finished work of Christ in our hearts. This means that when we have faith that Jesus Christ gave his life on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, and when we believe that God resurrected Jesus Christ from the dead, Jesus Christ comes to live inside us through God’s Holy Spirit.

Before we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, we are not spiritually alive to God, because His Spirit does not dwell in us. Ephesians 2:1-2 (NLT) informs us, “1 Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. 2 You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.” This was a very terrible state we were in, but God always had a plan to rescue us. John 3:16 says that He loved us so much that He gave the world His only begotten Son, so that we wouldn’t perish in our sinful state, but through Christ, we would have access to eternal life. The work that God completed through Jesus Christ shows us His great love for everyone. God has no respect of persons. He doesn’t love one person more than He loves another. Romans 2:11 (NLT) says, “For God does not show favoritism.” He is a God of love and He loves everyone. He sent His Son to save us when we were at our worst, when humanity was utterly sinful and disobedient. No person can say, “God saved me because I am so good and devoted.” We were all lost in sin, and God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ is for anyone and everyone that will accept it. Ephesians 2:8(NLT) says about salvation, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God.” We are saved through our faith in what God accomplished through Jesus Christ, not because of our effort or works. God is for us, and He wants everyone to be saved, but it is indeed our choice. We choose whether we will give our lives to God and become His child through His beloved and precious Son, Jesus Christ. He hopes we will make this choice, but sadly many don’t. We are transferred from death to life by our faith in Him, and our Heavenly Father doesn’t compromise on the faith requirement. If we do not believe in what He’s done for us through Christ, then we are refusing to believe that He loves us that much. “Well, what’s the big deal about that?” you might ask. Why do we have to believe that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son in order to live an eternity with Him?

“Yes, God is for us! But He is against sin, and we cannot in any way deny this truth. Through Jesus Christ, God invites us into Himself, but He is holy and can have no part in sin. To take care of this, He has given us a way through Christ to have new life!”

The answer to this question is contained within God’s Plan. It’s the plan He kept secret from the very beginning,

until Jesus Christ. No one knew, not even His prophets. The Apostle Paul revealed to us in Ephesians 3:9-10(NLT), “9 God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure.10 And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth.” God also teaches us in 1Corinthians 2:7-9(NLT), “7 No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God— his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. 8 But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord. 9 That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.

Our Heavenly Father is holy and pure, and everything He does is perfect and true. His mysterious plan is to unite us all in Christ and to bring all things under the authority and power of our Redeemer. Colossians 1:26-27(NLT) cosigns this spectacular truth by telling us, “26 This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. 27 For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.” God hopes that we will share in the glory of Christ, and we should do everything we possibly can in this life to ensure that we do. Yes, God is for us! But He is against sin, and we cannot in any way deny this truth. Through Jesus Christ, God invites us into Himself, but He is holy and can have no part in sin. To take care of this, He has given us a way through Christ to have new life! 2Corinthians 5:17(NIV) declares, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Through believing in the accomplishment of Christ, we shed the old and embrace the new, but if we refuse to believe and have faith in the accomplishment of Christ, we are refusing God, and this is a sin. Our faith gives God permission to transform us from the inside out, but we cannot dwell with Him in Christ if we refuse to have faith. A mind and heart that harbors sin and makes excuses for it is indeed the sinful nature. Romans 8:7 (NLT) tells us, “For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will.” It is important to understand that Jesus Christ has given us a new nature, but many of us choose to obey the sinful nature and not the nature of Christ, which is a nature that seeks only to please God. In Colossians 3:10(NLT), God commands, “Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.” This verse very clearly tells us that it is our choice to do this. We can put on our new nature, which is the nature of Christ, or we can choose to operate in the old nature of sin that Christ delivered us from. It’s up to us. God wants us to allow our lives to be governed by our new nature, because His blessings are contained within it. Romans 8:31(NLT) declares, “What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” This is tremendous assurance for our lives. His plan is that we will share in His glory. He is such a loving Father that He wants to drench us in His delight and goodness, and just as He freely shares with us, He wants us to freely share with others, because this is what love does. Love shares! But we can’t share it if we don’t believe and have faith in it. In order to share in God’s glory, He has empowered us in Christ to love on His level. We can’t accomplish this by our own merits, it can only be accomplished by loving others through Christ. God tells us in Galatians 5:6(NLT), “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” This is why it is so awesomely important to believe that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Romans 8:39 declares that nothing can separate us from God’s love, and we must comprehend the extent to which He has demonstrated His love. He sent His most precious treasure to risk everything for our sakes. Believing this truth in the depths of our hearts gives us ability to love others through Christ, and this is God’s plan for us. Loving through Jesus Christ is the testimony of our faith in what God accomplished for us through him. It bears witness that we are God’s children of light, and that we are chosen by God to become like Jesus Christ who is our Big Brother, as it says in Romans 8:29. We are destined to walk by faith and not by sight. We can call those things which are not as though they were, and we can always count on God’s faithfulness, because He chose us to be His very own. Each choice that we make to decrease in the flesh and increase in God’s Spirit affirms our belief that God is for us. He is transforming us through His love, as He works in us to will and do of His good pleasure.