Why is Salvation by Faith?

Thomas Watson

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through
faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift
of God—not by works, so that no one can boast."
Ephesians 2:8-9

"Jesus said to the woman—Your faith has saved
you; go in peace." Luke 7:50

Why is salvation by faith?

To exclude all glorying in the creature. Faith is a
humble grace. If salvation were by repentance or 
works, a man would say, "It is my righteousness
which has saved me!" But if it is of faith, where is
boasting? Faith fetches all from Christ—and gives
all the glory to Christ!

God's believing people are a humble people.
"Be clothed with humility." God's people shrink into
nothing in their own thoughts. David cries out, "I am
a worm, and not a man!" Though a saint, though a
king—yet a worm! When Moses' face shined, he
covered it with a veil. When God's people shine most
in grace—they are covered with the veil of humility.
Abraham the father of the faithful, confesses, "I am
nothing but dust and ashes." "God resists the proud."
Surely, God will not take to be with Himself in glory,
such as whom He resists.

God's believing people are a willing people.
Though they cannot serve God perfectly—they serve
Him willingly. They do not grudge God a little time
spent in His worship. They do not murmur at sufferings.
They will go through a sea and a wilderness—if God calls.
"Your people shall be a willing people." This spontaneity
and willingness is from the attractive power of God's
Spirit. The Spirit does not force—but sweetly draws the
will. This willingness makes all our services acceptable.
God sometimes accepts of willingness without the
work—but never the work without willingness.

God's believing people are a consecrated people.
They have "holiness to the Lord" written upon them.
"You are a holy people to the Lord your God." God's
people are separated from the world—and sanctified
by the Spirit. The priests under the law were not only
to wash in the laver—but were arrayed with glorious
apparel. This was typical, to show that God's people
are not only washed from gross sins—but adorned
with holiness of life. They bear not only God's name
—but His image! Holiness is God's stamp; if He does
not see this stamp upon us, He will not own us for
His believing people.

Good Friday

I am not ashamed to tell people that I have no rituals for lent. I do not give up anything to feel that I am denying the self. Yet, since my wilderness time with God, the lent season has become so dear to my heart, especially Good Friday. It always takes me right back to two thousand years ago and I experience sadness, grief with a heart full to the point of exploding with gratitude. It does not matter how much I tell myself that I am not going to feel this way, it seems like I have no control over what I experience this time of the year. So, I guess, in a strange way, I have a ritual.

I pray that God would bring us to a point where all of us would KNOW through our experiences with Him, the depth of this love of His that never fails.  May we learn to love Him in return and learn total dependence on Him

I pray that we would all hunger for Paul’s passion for the gospel, Abraham’s faith, Daniel’s passion for intercession and David’s passion for God’s heart. May we walk in  purity and holiness

From the Inner Life of Ruth Bryan

1858

 Good Friday.—Blessed Lord Jesus, I hail You in the depths. I worship You in the shades of my sin and death, for there are You my eternal life. You obtained the keys of hell and death at a costly price; even by going into their very depths, and enduring all that justice, by them, would have inflicted on Your Church. And now the keys are Your right, not merely as Creator—but as Surety and Head; seeing You have paid the uttermost farthing, and can claim the release for the once debtor. As Head You were crowned with the curse in those emblematical thorns, and can now claim exemption for everyone of Your members. Praised forever be Your Name, worthy Lamb. I would forever be speaking and writing of You, from a feeling, sin-pardoned heart.

"Your presence makes my paradise, 
 And where You are, is heaven."

You make Good Friday every day. Good living and good dying, for You are my goodness, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, and the Rock of my salvation. Forever blessed be the once crucified Redeemer. Oh, I would always live beneath Your shadow below, and then, with open face, behold Your glories above. Jehovah be praised for Gethsemane and Calvary scenes. Oh, do fire my soul, and make me a warm living witness of Your love "which passes knowledge." Do, Lord, perfume me with Your fragrance, that I may be a sweet savor of You to Your loved ones. Let us be "as one to make one living sound" in praising You both by lip and life. I love these sacred hours alone, to get into my sanctum and begin my heaven. My soul pants for more revelation of You.

The Key To The Missionary Message - Oswald Chambers

The key to the missionary and all those who are called to preach, evangelize, share and teach any kind of group that God has called you to minister to, all has to be grounded in repentance, remission of sins and Christ Himself is the propitiation for our sins. There is a depth to these few words that grip your soul and open heaven when you truly get hold of this message. God spent more time with me on the subject of repentance than He spent on the subject of Holiness. I understood later on, the importance of it all in my life and the life of other Christians.

It is sad to see how people who professed to be Christians are fighting over whether the true Salvation called for repentance or not. Just the fact there is disagreement over repentance tells you how bad we massacred God’s idea of Salvation to implement our own. If you recall, in one of my posts on faith I shared with you about the family that I know in the background and one of them went for communion with a grudge, hatred, and anger in the heart. What I did not tell you is that the whole family does not believe that repentance is needed in Salvation. We cannot separate the two and when true Salvation enters your heart, you can be sure, repentance will not be far off.

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The truth is, without the gift of repentance in your heart there is a chain reaction in your so called Christian life and one of them is that you will never have a spiritual relationship with God let alone spiritual growth. Without repentance you live the kind of Salvation like a woman with false pregnancy, clinically termed pseudocyesis, which is the belief that you are expecting a baby when in reality you are not carrying a child. God has taught me how Salvation and repentance are two links that are attached together and they carry the weight of everything else that accompany Salvation, such as brokenness, holiness, sanctification, etc. He taught me that as long as you do not know what true repentance means, there is no true belief in your heart, there is no humility, no need to surrender, and there will never be boldness that comes from God either. One of the reasons He took God so long to teach me about repentance it is because He needed to teach me how they all relate together. And before He even taught me about the numerous pastors out there who were not called or prepared by Him (hence the Gospel with no repentance being preached) and the avalanche of Christian following this kind of teaching, He made sure I could see the forest in my own eyes first before seeing others planks.

Before my wilderness, I had evangelism training, and I used to love telling people how they needed God. And yes I learned to tell them that Christ died for their sins, salvation is free so that no one can boast etc. If you ever get involved in evangelism you know the drill and we all have those verses written down to invite people to Christ. While I was content with myself and all the work I was involved in, after I learned the right way from God, I lost my man made boldness and could not say a word to anyone about Salvation until God felt it was time to give me the gift of boldness. Imagine, I was a Christian for seven years, yet I knew nothing of repentance and I had no idea that I needed it. Through my wilderness time, during the brokenness process and before regeneration and holiness, God had to deal with my repentance first.

While I was elated when God gave me the gift of boldness, but I had a sharp pain in my heart because as I compared my man made boldness that I possessed in my arrogance and the one given to me by God that was grounded in humility, Agape love and also because I could see I was spiritually bankrupt without Him, my heart was weeping. I did more harm than good in sharing the Gospel because man helped forge a path for me to create my own footprint. One thing I used to love doing was without having God’s righteous judgement in my heart, I pinpointed which group was wrong and of course MY group was right. I had no idea that not only God put all of us in the same basket, but it was not how God goes about it. I was shocked to find out how all Churches are God’s Church but no Church is God’s Church. While each one of us is fighting about which group is right and we are so adamant about building “A BUILDING” for God, He is at work gathering His own Church.

Oswald Chambers said “the missionary’s message is the limitless importance of Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins, and a missionary is someone who is immersed in the truth of that revelation.”  Well, you do not get immersed in the truth of that revelation without having experienced the gift of repentance coming directly from God. This truth will be your breakfast, your dinner, your supper, your snack, the water you bathe in, the water you drink, the life you live and the walk you walk etc. Yet, you are never saturated enough. When God brought the gift of repentance in my heart where I came face to face with my own bankruptcy and who He is, I bowed down and wept for weeks. With true repentance in your heart, you know and compute that there is a God and it is not you.

There is a song by By Caroline Bonnett & Sue Rinaldi called “ I will follow you to the cross and lay myself down” I recall singing this song for hours because I was in need of God to saturate and purify me with what I found through the gift of repentance. The truth is, most Christians live life completely disconnected from God? Before the gift of repentance I had no idea that my life was disconnected. I still remember my lack of victory over sin and I had no idea what the victorious life was about. I was tired of being in love with God for a few days and be my own self for a few months like a yo-yo. It turns out all of it is anchored in the gift of repentance. Through this gift, my eyes opened to what the word of God means by “victory over sin”, and I found out “my daily life, Christ, the Holy Spirit, God, and the cross are one in the same”. All of the sudden I found out that I have been living a life disconnected from Him, and at the same time I knew how to connect the dot and the circle was formed because all the links were in place.

Until you learn true repentance from God, Salvation will be that disconnected thing you acquire piece by piece and you decide which piece is important to you. Another thing God taught me is that every one of us true Christian is a missionary working with Him. The day that He taught me about being on mission with Him, I woke up like a crazy person on a mission. I could not do anything except getting in the car and drove miles away where I bypassed the same store chain and I landed exactly where He wanted me to go. As I walked through the doors of this store, I found the book sitting right there and it was in the bin because they did not have more of it so they reduced the price. It was right before the wilderness got really bad and I still had my car. The book is called on mission with God written by Henry Blackaby.  God not only talked to me through the book, He wrote things in there just for me. Like an idiot I had no idea these things were written just for me, I sent email to my Bible study group telling them the pages where I learned all that I learned. God taught me from this book for a whole month so that I could understand and cooperate with Him in the work He was about to do in me. Later on, I wanted to revisit certain things that I read, I opened the book and strangely I could not certain things that I knew I learned from the book. I went back to my email to see which pages I referenced before. To make a long story short, when I talked to a friend who is kind of sampling Christianity and not interested in making a commitment to God yet, surprisingly the person said to me “sometimes, God writes things just for us and it is just another way of teaching us His word.” Suddenly, I felt like God talked to me through a donkey.

God has taught me so much about repentance that I could write a book on it, but the truth is God has not directed me there yet and I sense that most Christians are not ready to digest what I have learned. But the good news is, whether you are a pastor who has never acquired the gift of repentance or whether you are a Christian who has managed to butcher what you have received from Him, no matter where you are at, there is hope, there is forgiveness, and there is life in Him. Satan has done a great job with Adam and Eve in taking away and adding to the word of God until they lost their position and died spiritually. Even in your spiritual blindness you know something is wrong in your relationship with Him, and often time what we do, we learned to shut up the spirit with verses about God’s love and goodness to keep us exactly where we are, which is really, “nowhere.” Those verses that we are claiming at the wrong time in our lives help us to ignore this little nagging voice that is so deep down inside. You should know the reason the voice is almost unrecognizable and so faint, it is because your lamp is running out of fuel. There is time to go to Him and beg Him to bring repentance in your heart, beg Him to teach you how to turn around and make your life about Him.  Pray and never cease to pray until He answers you. Stop taking this life for granted and stop shutting His voice down. Pray for God to lead you in a path that is pleasing to Him, pray that He opens your heart to the truth, and pray that He would help you to drop everything that you think you know at His feet and to give you a blank mind to start over with Him. Most of all, pray that He gives you the proper attitude toward Him. Pray that He would put His humility in your heart, pray that He would teach you how to get rid of all fear to take up your cross and follow Him. Pray that you learn to heed to His word while there is time. Pray that you stop being scared of the word “surrender” and pray that He drills in your heart a need to go forward in confidence, because we serve a high priest who has been there too. PRAY, PRAY, AND PRAY.

I will follow You to the cross (Lay myself down)

By Caroline Bonnett / Sue Rinaldi

I WILL FOLLOW YOU TO THE CROSS,
And lay myself down, lay myself down.
I will follow You to the cross
And lay myself down, lay myself down.

Rid me of these dirty clothes,
Cleanse me from all this pollution.
I choose to walk in purity,
Oh, purify me, purify me.

Kiss me with Your healing touch,
Take me to the heat of the fire;
Bathe me in Your liquid love,
Oh, saturate me, saturate me.

Humbly I stand, humbly I kneel,
Humbly I fall at Your throne.
With a craving for You
That no words can describe:

Saturate me, saturate me;
Saturate me, saturate me;
Purify me, purify me;
Purify me, purify me;
Purify me, purify me

Oswald Chambers Message of October 15

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