Author: Nick

By one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified —Hebrews 10:14 Perfection means completeness. We need forgiveness to be complete, to be what God intended us to be. Forgiveness is the door to the life we are meant to have. Why does God forgive us? Not because we are sorry or even because we repent from our sinful ways.  The only reason for the forgiveness of our sins by God, and the infinite depth of His promise to forget them, is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the result of our personal realization of the atonement by the Cross of Christ, which He has provided for us. The joy of the Lord is the peace and joy that comes with forgiveness. If our joy begins to slip away, you can bet we are losing a grip on our forgiveness and that guilt and “looking back” is taking over our lives. Our pride tells us our sin is too great; our faith is too weak. We begin to lose faith in the saving power of the cross. God is just in saving bad people only as He makes them good. Our Lord does not […]

Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation . . . —2 Corinthians 7:10   Everyone must have a real encounter with sin, recognizing what it is, not just a “bad thing” but an offense against God. Conviction of sin is one of the most uncommon things that ever happens to a person. It is the beginning of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict people of sin (see John 16:8). And when the Holy Spirit stirs a person’s conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not that person’s relationship with others that bothers him but his relationship with God— “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight . . .” (Psalm 51:4).  Repentance always brings a person to the point of saying, “I have sinned.” The surest sign that God is at work in his life is when he says that and means it. Anything less is simply sorrow for having made foolish mistakes— a reflex action caused by self-disgust. The entrance into the kingdom of God is through the sharp, sudden pains of repentance colliding with man’s respectable “goodness.” Then […]

I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth —Genesis 9:13 It is the will of God that human beings should get into a right-standing relationship with Him, and His covenants are designed for this purpose.  All the great blessings of God are finished and complete, but they are not mine until I enter into a relationship with Him on the basis of His covenant. When I have really transacted business with God on the basis of His covenant, letting everything else go, there is no sense of personal achievement— no human ingredient in it at all. Instead, there is a complete overwhelming sense of being brought into union with God, and my life is transformed and radiates peace and joy.

We are here for a purpose. To be useful, we need to be set aside for that purpose.  Salvation and sanctification have to do with that setting aside. Satan doesn’t want us to fulfill our purpose; one of his great gambits is to keep us focused on the salvation and sanctification so that we never move on to fulfilling a purpose. It is that gambit that keeps us sitting in pews wanting to hear yet again that we are saved; contemplating further this mystery of sanctification. He keeps us in a vicious cycle of recognizing our sinful nature, knowing we need a savior and turning to Christ. I know folks who have “gone forward” to accept salvation numerous times, but have never taken a single step to further the Kingdom past themselves. They become obsessed with “losing” their salvation or “becoming more holy.” As righteous as that sounds; it is completely SELF righteous; for it is completely focused on self.    To be holy doesn’t mean to be good, it means to be set aside for a purpose. To have a purpose, you have to do something. Have you EVER told anyone about Jesus? Have you lifted a hand […]

To him who overcomes . . . —Revelation 2:7 As I work on this devotional I am listening to a high school football play off. It’s a war. If we experience life we learn early that much about life is a war, a continuing struggle. This is true in the natural, physical, mental and spiritual.  Life without war is impossible in the natural or the supernatural realm. It is a fact that there is a continuing struggle in the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual areas of life. Health is the balance between the physical parts of my body and all the things and forces surrounding me. To maintain good health I must have sufficient internal strength to fight off the things that are external. Everything outside my physical life is designed to cause my death. The very elements that sustain me while I am alive work to decay and disintegrate my body once it is dead. If I have enough inner strength to fight, I help to produce the balance needed for health. The same is true of the mental life. If I want to maintain a strong and active mental life, I have to fight. This struggle produces […]

My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power . . . —1 Corinthians 2:4 Human wisdom is grounded in experience. That’s why “older and wiser” run together. Generally those who have experienced the most, demonstrate the most wisdom. And there’s the rub. Human wisdom is also limited by experience. That’s why we should never base our discussion of Christ on our experience alone. Even if we have walked with Him for years, we can experience only a morsel of all that He is. This is not to say we shouldn’t share our testimony, our experience. We certainly should. But we should make clear that we are relating what God did in OUR lives. Leaving open the possibility He may do differently and greater in the life of another.  Nor should we rely on our “clever” or “precise” recitation of our experience. Rather we should rely on the Holy Spirit to pick the words and the time of their speaking. Only He knows what the need and state of the listener is. God is reality. We must be rooted in Him. Our hope for others is […]

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect . . . —Philippians 3:12 It is a difficult, but crucial point, to recognize that God doesn’t want to make us perfect — God’s purpose is to make us one with Himself.  What shines forth and reveals God in your life is not your relative consistency to an idea of what a saint should be, but your genuine, living relationship with Jesus Christ, and your unrestrained devotion to Him. But doesn’t Christ say to be perfect even as the Heavenly Father is Perfect? When you start talking about perfection, people immediately become very uncomfortable. None of us are perfect, as in flawless. We all make mistakes, we all do and say things we are sorry for. So what is the perfection our LORD is referring to in the above verse? We see the translation for perfect is: complete, of full age. How do we come to completion? How do we arrive at full age, or maturity? We grow up in Christ. We die to our flesh, our carnal thinking and reasoning, and learn to live totally under the guidance of the Spirit of God. That is why Christ gave […]

Whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all —James 2:10 There is a strong tendency for Christians to seek to revert to a life under the law. It’s pride.  we are to understand and honor both Gospel and Law. Somehow we can’t get over the idea that we can satisfy the law, that we can be “good” by our own effort. Yet the law demands that we be absolutely moral, an impossible task. But the Gospel provides the answer: Jesus. When Christ works a change in us and we leave behind some sin or sins, we compare ourselves with others and swell up with pride that somehow we are responsible. But if we are living the spirit-filled life, as we leave some sin behind, He will point us to some other way in which we are falling short of perfect compliance with the law.  This is not to say that we should abandon yielding ourselves to Christ for His molding and changing. All we need to abandon is the pride that comes with change for which we can claim no credit.  I, a guilty sinner, can never work to get […]