Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Child of God

 If you are a Christian, then you are a child of God, you are a co-heir with Jesus Christ, you have an eternal inheritance, you have the almighty powerful Holy Spirit dwelling in you, and God is for you. You have died with Christ, you were buried with Christ, you have risen with Christ, you ascended with Christ, and you are now seated with Christ in Heaven, and the only way to reverse it is if Christ descends, and goes back into the grave and stays there.

This is what God has done for us, this truth must be what keeps our heads up and sustains us through difficulties, this must be what we rejoice in, regardless of our fleeting feelings that will leave us on a whim. You cannot make yourself feel happy on command, but you can rejoice in God on command. And by rejoicing in God, you can stir your affections up for Christ and His people, and eventually you may discover that you feel quite happy, regardless of your situation.

We must never forget that Christianity is not a feeling, although feelings are most certainly involved. Feelings alone will not sustain our Christian walk. Learning and understanding Christian doctrines by the power of the Holy Spirit, and being able to reason those doctrines out during difficult times is what will sustain us through troubles.

It does not matter how you feel as much as it matters what you are. Our pleasant feelings will abandon us, but our Savior won’t. Our faith and strength is in Christ, not in our feelings. One drop of faith while in an ocean of troubles is better than being in an ocean of pleasant feelings without having one drop of faith. Faith the size of a mustard seed may be small, but it is of infinite value because it brings us to the infinitely valuable Savior. It brings us to the God who has pleasures forevermore at His right hand.

Seek pleasure above God, and you’ll eventually end up with neither. Seek God through Christ before pleasure, and you’ll eventually end up with both forever.-- Joshua Arnold