"Being in God's Favor"

"By this I know that Thou favourest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me." (Psalms 41:11) When it comes to being in God's favor, there is something that we must be perfectly clear about, and there is something that we must fully understand, God is not a respecter of persons (Romans 2:11). We all have sinned and fall short of His glory (Romans 3:23), therefore, we all need to be punished for our sins; and the punishment for our sin is death, seeing that death is the price to be paid for sin (Romans 6:23). But at the same time, Jesus has paid the price of our death, dying in our place; it is the gift of God, to all that will receive it; not just for some, but for anyone that will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, will be saved (John 3:16). That being said, and hopefully, completely understood, once we have received God's free gift of salvation through Christ Jesus, we are henceforth and forever more in God's favor! What that actually means, for those that might not get the point, is that we have changed locations when it comes to God's respect, and He now looks upon us favorably because we are washed by the blood of Jesus Christ His Son. There is really nothing that we can do, or not do, to take away from, or add to the cleansing power of the blood of Christ, so we need to get over the thought that we can; but what we must be about, is walking in the favor of God; meaning, that once we have been brought into God's favor by the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, then we must live out being a child of God, and a son of the KING. That is the whole thing about being lifted up, in that we are to be strong in the Lord, because He has made us what we are in Him; therefore, we have humility before God, but we have power and strength over the power of sin in our lives; not because we have any power or strength within our selves, but because Christ is living in us, we are more than conquerors, for indeed the battle has already been won (Romans 8:37, Ephesians 1:3-14). This is what John is speaking of in 1 John 4, as he describes how that we know we are in God, and that God is in us, because we have the power living in us to love; if the power to love is not within us, then we need to understand that God's Spirit is not alive in us, and we need a changed heart; we need the heart of God... "Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart." (2 Corinthians 3:3)