Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
If your soul is tempted, strained, pulled this way and that, bewildered, confused, take heart because God's true saints have had those same trials for 6000 years. But they have also been relieved, un-confused, saved from despair, by choosing to believe Good News truths like these:
(1) Are you convicted deep inside that you are a sinner? Listen to "the Pharisees and scribes" tell you the one true thing they ever uttered: "This Man [Jesus] receiveth sinners" (Luke 15:2). Jesus has said, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37). Good news! The Holy Spirit has brought that conviction of sin to you; this is prima facie evidence that the Lord Himself is working for your salvation. Yes! Grasp that, realize it, and you will be singing the Hallelujah chorus for eternity.
But that paradox starts gnawing at your soul immediately: how can you be happy when you are constantly reminded that you are a sinner? The answer: the Holy Spirit's conviction of your sin includes the conviction that the Son of God is your Savior from it. Therefore your attention is being constantly drawn away from looking at yourself, and fixed on Christ. So, next:
(2) Salvation is yours by looking at Him. That's not the thoughtless glance. Listen to John the Baptist's impassioned cry to the multitude: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Jesus emphasized this same truth to Nicodemus in that late-night interview: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever [you!] believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (3:14).
Look again: the "believing" here is the same as "beholding" because that was what the Israelites in the wilderness had to do: look at that serpent, and that meant look, and look, and look, intensely, as for their very life! That means put away your remote and let the Holy Spirit call you to dig in the Bible; now dig. Not as a "work," but let faith do the work (Gal. 5:5, 6). Let your soul become obsessed with how good the Good News is in the pure, true "gospel of Christ," God's message for today, which is the "present truth," the "third angel's message in verity" (Rom. 1:16; 2 Peter 1:17, Rev. 14:6-14). Learn truth as for your very life!
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 26, 2007.
Copyright © 2011 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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