Eternally Assured

"In short, when you love God, you make him the greatest pleasure of your life. When we can consider what real love for God is, you can easily see that you cannot love God in this way if you think you are under the curse and wrath of God. You cannot love God if you are under the continual secret suspicion that He is really your enemy!" -  Walter Marshall (The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification) Edited by Bruce McRae What is Sanctification? Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness. (Westminster Shorter Catechism)  A Secret Suspicion I am currently reading a book called the Gospel Mystery of Sanctification by Walter Marshall. The first chapter of the book spent time exploring what it really means to love God. There were several pages that I read in which I felt like I was being spiritually filleted. To love God -

(Heidelberg Q&A 49) How does Christ's Ascension into heaven benefit us?  First he is our Advocate in heaven before the Father. Second we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that he, our Head will also take us, his members up to himself. Third he sends us his Spirit as a counter pledge by whose power we seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, and not the things that are on earth My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (1st John 2: 1-2) Advocate: a person who pleads for or in behalf of another, intercessor.  Have you ever felt exhausted and weighed down by the condemnation that can come from your own heart? Is your mind an endless list of evaluations of motives and sins? Weary one, are you c

(Heidelberg Catechism Q & A 52) How does Christ's return to "judge the living and the dead"comfort you?  In all distress and persecution, with uplifted head, I confidently await the very judge, who has already offered himself to the judgement of God in my place and removed the whole curse from me. Christ will cast all his enemies and mine into everlasting condemnation, but will take me and all his chosen ones to himself into the joy and glory of heaven.  I have been at a loss of words for the past few days, unable to completely process what has transpired in the aftermath that follows the murder of a black man in broad daylight at the hands of an evil man who bears the badge of civil authority - the authority that ironically is supposed to preserve and protect life rather than take it. I feel overwhelmed and helpless at the state of our world and the state of justice. Right now, all I want to do is sit in the dust and weep. If anything - the Gospel of Christ