Know You Have Eternal Life: Pray and Live Assured

Not because your faith is perfect, but because the object of your faith is perfect. Not because your grip on him never weakens from time to time, but because his life and his work and his person and his promises are utterly trustworthy. And he says, you have eternal life if you trust in him and you believe in him, which means in the end, our assurance is not something that comes from self confidence. And I think we mix that up a lot of the time. We think assurance means that we're confident in ourselves. It's not that. It's a Christ confidence. [01:07:22] (35 seconds)  #ChristConfidence

you know, as I was sitting and while standing and and singing this last song, there there's just a question that maybe started rolling around in my head. What does it mean to hope? You know? And what does it mean to put your hope in something? A lot of us, I think we actually have in our minds this difference between hoping in something and knowing something. And, you know, as we use the word hope in the scriptures and as we we sing the word hope in the song that we just declared together, what we mean is an assurance, a certainty about something. [00:50:12] (35 seconds)  #HopeIsAssurance

And that means your assurance, again, it's not resting on the grip of your, on the strength of your grip on Christ, it's resting on the strength of Christ's grip on you. And you've all heard the passage no one can snatch you out of his hand. That's good news. Right? Because if assurance rested mainly on me, I mean, it would collapse every time I looked at my weakness. Every fresh failure would become a reason for despair. Every struggle would be evidence against me. Every hard season would leave me wondering if I'm slipping away. But John says a child of God is kept, not perfectly by his own discipline, not finally by his own resolve, but by Christ. The same Christ who gave you life is the Christ who guards that life. [01:27:02] (46 seconds)  #HeldByChrist

You don't come to God as some stranger trying to get in. You come as a child who's been welcomed through the Son. You come to a father who hears you with freedom, with boldness, with trust, and you bring not only your own needs before him, but you carry your brothers and sisters who are stumbling and in need of grace too. And because you know you have eternal life, you can also live with assurance. Not because you're beyond the battle or that sin is no longer serious or that the evil one's not a real threat, but because Christ keeps those who belong to him. And the one who gave you life is the one who's gonna guard your life, And the one who saved you is the one who will keep you. And so it means this passage just leaves us with a really simple question. Where's your confidence today? [01:31:13] (45 seconds)  #BelovedChild

And so when we go into God's throne room and we bring our request before him, the very act of speaking to him starts shaping the things that we desire toward his will. It's like you hear your requests, the things that, like, you're anxious about or the things that you're worried about or the things that you want, and you say them out loud in front of God, and there's just this this thing that happens where it reshapes who you are and what you say into a person that desires will of God. And the more and more that that happens, the more confidence that we can have that the things we seek will be granted to us. Because if it's God's will, will it not be done? [01:13:43] (45 seconds)  #PrayForHisWill

And mature believers aren't simply more aware of sin in themselves and in other people's lives. A mature believer is someone who is more faithful in prayer for other people. And in that case, John says that God will give him life when you pray for them. Now it doesn't mean that the praying believer is the source of their life, but God in response to our intercessory prayers restores and strengthens and renews our straying brothers and sisters. And prayer becomes like one of these means that God uses to preserve his people. If you wanna experience eternal life today, become the means by which God is dishing eternal life out to the people around you. Pray. [01:19:03] (47 seconds)  #IntercedeForLife

And it's this amazing thing, I think, if you really stop and and think about this because John is saying a child of God isn't coming before the father like a stranger. You're not some intruder in God's house that's just begging to get his attention or trying to get him to do things that you want or that you need. You're coming before him as one who's been welcomed and as one who belongs and as one whose life, remember, is bound up in the life of God's son. And so you come before him as his child with confidence toward him. Think about this if you're a parent and how you welcome your children to come before you. [01:10:57] (42 seconds)  #BelongInChrist

You can think about it. Right? If if prayer just depended on our ability to know exactly what's best and to ask for all the right things, I mean, it would be a terrifying experience. I'd be afraid to ask for anything at all in case I'm wrong. But if prayer depends and if prayer depends on our spiritual eloquence, then most of us would never really dare to pray at all. If outcomes dependent on our own worthiness, then none of us would have any hope at all. But prayer is resting on something that's far more stable than us and even than our requests. It rests on the will of God, which means prayer isn't something that's about us coming to him and forcing his hand. It's a a way that we come to him and we start to trust his heart. [01:14:43] (39 seconds)  #PrayerNotPerformance