"Touched By God"

Before moving forward I needed to pause and reflect on a few things that God had spoken to my heart about in that "victory lap" taken over the last 55 days. I think the main point that I gathered from that fun little run down memory lane, is that we should never think that we have arrived, or that we have somehow been able to come to a place where we are no longer affected by temptation or sin; as if we have reached the point where we have crucified that old man once and for all, and therefore are now free to move around the planet without any fear of being stumbled. Our victory over temptation and sin is only found in Christ Jesus our Lord, and is only made possible by abiding in Him. As soon as we take on the character of being the victor, we are going to find out just how vulnerable we are to falling into a pit. It's really not to hard to see the resemblance in how many great men of the Bible have been taken to a place where they are subject to defeat and the fear that comes with it; due mostly to putting some confidence in their own abilities instead of trusting completely upon the strength of God. Just as with the closing Scriptures from yesterday, we need to understand the difference between being stumbled by sin and living in sin; because the difference is worlds apart. If we have the illusion that we are saved because we have been touched by God, and that we are therefore now a child of His just by the mere fact that He has reached out to us, then I do believe we are going to be in for a great awakening; because He reaches out to everyone and touches them in one way or another, but only those that surrender their lives over to Him are going to be accepted as His children. I have never felt so sure about anything before, that we are living in a time of great awakening where the world is being given one last call before the door is closed. The sad part in all of this, is that those that have assurance in themselves are found in great numbers within the church, for they have based their salvation upon the encounter that they had with Jesus instead of a life that is surrendered, and that is abiding in Jesus as Lord of their life. How many people do you know that think they are a Christian based upon association? Those that say with great confidence that they know Jesus, go to church every Sunday, or read the Bible regularly, and then base their salvation upon those things as if that is proof of what it means to be a Christian. This was the greatest difference between David and Saul; because they were both touched by God, but only one truly surrendered his life to Him... "For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous." (1 John 3:11 & 12)