Silas
Beloved of All
Your prayer to be where God wants you until He comes for you and to live in a way that pleases Him is a beautiful desire, and I thank God for the honesty and hunger for Him that it shows.
The law of God is holy and just and good. It was not given to keep you from a full and rich life, but to show you the path to it. It reveals what is right and what sin is, and when we look at it honestly we see our need. No one is made right before God by keeping the law, because the law can only show us where we have fallen short. By the law comes the knowledge of sin. If righteousness could come by keeping rules, then Christ would not have needed to die.
God gave the law to show us our spiritual poverty so that we would be shut up to one hope and cast ourselves upon His grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Before Christ came, men related to God through the law and its sacrifices to cover sin. Now, through Christ, we have a new covenant, not of the letter that condemns and brings death, but of the Spirit that gives life. The promise God made to bless His people does not rest on our perfect obedience. That promise is given by grace, and our failure to keep the law cannot undo the covenant He has made to bless you in Christ. Your standing before God rests on what Jesus has done for you, received by simple faith in Him alone.
This does not make the law void. It establishes the law for its true purpose, to bring us to despair of saving ourselves so that we receive God's provision in Jesus. When we come into that new relationship, being dead to the law as a way of earning favor and alive to God through Jesus, the very things we struggled and failed to do in our own strength begin to happen as the natural fruit of a new life. The law can point to the path but it has no power to enable you to walk in it, and trying in the flesh only leads to frustration. There is another law at work, the law of sin and death in our old nature, but God has given the law of the Spirit of life in Christ. As you sow to the Spirit and walk by the Spirit, He gives the power the law could never give.
God is faithful to keep His own. He created you with purpose, to know Him and to have fellowship with Him forever, and you are precious in His sight. If you trust in the Lord He will sustain you and bring you through. He will complete the purpose for which He made you. Even afflictions are not outside His faithful care, and He uses all things to shape you into His image, to make you more loving and gracious and forgiving as He is.
So I encourage you to settle this purpose in your heart, to live to please Him because you love Him, not to earn His love. That is the bottom line purpose of your existence, and it is there that life becomes rich and full. Keep delighting in His Word and letting it be your meditation, consenting that His way is good, and ask Him daily to fill you with His Spirit to live it.
I am praying for you that God will keep you by His faithfulness until the day Jesus comes for you, that you will rest fully in the finished work of Christ for your salvation, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit you will walk in a way that brings Him pleasure. May He cause you to abound in love for Jesus, to know the assurance of His promise, and to bear the fruit of a life sown to the Spirit that will reap everlasting life.
The law of God is holy and just and good. It was not given to keep you from a full and rich life, but to show you the path to it. It reveals what is right and what sin is, and when we look at it honestly we see our need. No one is made right before God by keeping the law, because the law can only show us where we have fallen short. By the law comes the knowledge of sin. If righteousness could come by keeping rules, then Christ would not have needed to die.
God gave the law to show us our spiritual poverty so that we would be shut up to one hope and cast ourselves upon His grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Before Christ came, men related to God through the law and its sacrifices to cover sin. Now, through Christ, we have a new covenant, not of the letter that condemns and brings death, but of the Spirit that gives life. The promise God made to bless His people does not rest on our perfect obedience. That promise is given by grace, and our failure to keep the law cannot undo the covenant He has made to bless you in Christ. Your standing before God rests on what Jesus has done for you, received by simple faith in Him alone.
This does not make the law void. It establishes the law for its true purpose, to bring us to despair of saving ourselves so that we receive God's provision in Jesus. When we come into that new relationship, being dead to the law as a way of earning favor and alive to God through Jesus, the very things we struggled and failed to do in our own strength begin to happen as the natural fruit of a new life. The law can point to the path but it has no power to enable you to walk in it, and trying in the flesh only leads to frustration. There is another law at work, the law of sin and death in our old nature, but God has given the law of the Spirit of life in Christ. As you sow to the Spirit and walk by the Spirit, He gives the power the law could never give.
God is faithful to keep His own. He created you with purpose, to know Him and to have fellowship with Him forever, and you are precious in His sight. If you trust in the Lord He will sustain you and bring you through. He will complete the purpose for which He made you. Even afflictions are not outside His faithful care, and He uses all things to shape you into His image, to make you more loving and gracious and forgiving as He is.
So I encourage you to settle this purpose in your heart, to live to please Him because you love Him, not to earn His love. That is the bottom line purpose of your existence, and it is there that life becomes rich and full. Keep delighting in His Word and letting it be your meditation, consenting that His way is good, and ask Him daily to fill you with His Spirit to live it.
I am praying for you that God will keep you by His faithfulness until the day Jesus comes for you, that you will rest fully in the finished work of Christ for your salvation, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit you will walk in a way that brings Him pleasure. May He cause you to abound in love for Jesus, to know the assurance of His promise, and to bear the fruit of a life sown to the Spirit that will reap everlasting life.
