Monday, October 17, 2005
My Hardest Verse In The Bible
Okay, so July is old news but William Meisheid at Beyond the Rim challenged us to write about our most difficult verse of the Bible and I just reread mine! There are two for context:
No, a truly redeemed person cannot have that redemption removed. The question, which only God can answer,"Was that person actually in the knowledge of our Lord, escaped from the defilements of the world?"
I remember researching it, that very night my son came home from his interrogation! I found the verse on apostasy and got my commentary. The explanation was just that. The apostate could not possibly have been a Christian in God's judgment. He had never surrendered his heart to Christ in the first place.
The dilema is that I was saved in high school, I drifted in college into my married life, I returned to my faith wholeheartedly. When was I saved? What if I had died during my backsliding? Did I return to my faith because my salvation was assured? Or was I just a seed in the tares at first, to be choked out. Truly, my faith was not alive...even though I remembered and believed I was still a Christian, I was not even trying to follow Him. Apostasy is an outward defiance of God's being. I did everything but that! The journey gets real bumpy for some but what of those stuck in the ditch, caught in a pothole? What about all those seeds Jesus talked about? Which ones are promised God's precious grace?
One thing is certain from this experience. It isn't easy to come back...I prayed that God would help me talk to Him again...prayer was lost to me...yet in HIs amazing power, I got involved with Moms In Touch and eventually started a prayer chain and led a prayer group! I prayed that I would become holy and full of His knowledge. At that time, I had no clue what was out there in the Christian underground of literature and music. Let me reiterate...only by God's awesome power and grace did I grow...I still cannot fathom all the knowledge and Truth that has come by here. I can't begin to elucidate. Was it homeschooling? Sure, but I met my closest non-Christian friends through a secularized homeschool co-op too! Church? Sure, but I was involved in a watered down version! Husband? Yes, but we were growing together...he was an infant/toddler in faith and couldn't lead yet. No, the source of my strength was a great awakening, God led miracles! To Him be the glory!
This dreaded statement along side the Promises that our salvation is assured by the Holy Spirit is baffling. Our son was a help in this department. In our church, the confirmation class would write their statement of faith and read it for the session of elders. My son's confession was wholly orthodox so that is amazed me. Oh, I forgot. The elders then get to question the confirmand. Their question, because he had included apostasy in his statement, was, "Can a person who is saved lose their salvation?" as promised to apostates. His answer was given, not based on a particular verse, but from thoughtful remembrance of training in the Westminster Confession, verse by verse (or maybe the card game, Redemption!)."For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them
and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it
would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness
than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to
them." ~2Peter 2:20-21
No, a truly redeemed person cannot have that redemption removed. The question, which only God can answer,"Was that person actually in the knowledge of our Lord, escaped from the defilements of the world?"
I remember researching it, that very night my son came home from his interrogation! I found the verse on apostasy and got my commentary. The explanation was just that. The apostate could not possibly have been a Christian in God's judgment. He had never surrendered his heart to Christ in the first place.
The dilema is that I was saved in high school, I drifted in college into my married life, I returned to my faith wholeheartedly. When was I saved? What if I had died during my backsliding? Did I return to my faith because my salvation was assured? Or was I just a seed in the tares at first, to be choked out. Truly, my faith was not alive...even though I remembered and believed I was still a Christian, I was not even trying to follow Him. Apostasy is an outward defiance of God's being. I did everything but that! The journey gets real bumpy for some but what of those stuck in the ditch, caught in a pothole? What about all those seeds Jesus talked about? Which ones are promised God's precious grace?
One thing is certain from this experience. It isn't easy to come back...I prayed that God would help me talk to Him again...prayer was lost to me...yet in HIs amazing power, I got involved with Moms In Touch and eventually started a prayer chain and led a prayer group! I prayed that I would become holy and full of His knowledge. At that time, I had no clue what was out there in the Christian underground of literature and music. Let me reiterate...only by God's awesome power and grace did I grow...I still cannot fathom all the knowledge and Truth that has come by here. I can't begin to elucidate. Was it homeschooling? Sure, but I met my closest non-Christian friends through a secularized homeschool co-op too! Church? Sure, but I was involved in a watered down version! Husband? Yes, but we were growing together...he was an infant/toddler in faith and couldn't lead yet. No, the source of my strength was a great awakening, God led miracles! To Him be the glory!
