Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Matt Pavlik

Election To Eternal Life Is Unconditional

Election To Eternal Life Is Unconditional

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Who ultimately has the power to decide what happens in life? God is the one in control. Of everything.

The Bible teaches that a person’s election into salvation is unconditional. Unconditional means that there is no merit or mechanism within a person that tips God’s favor his or her way. People can’t earn their way to heaven. People can’t enter heaven unless God enables and allows them to enter. God’s vote in the election process is what counts.

For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me, and at the last day I will raise them up.

John 6:44 NLT

God Initiates and Completes the Election Process

God initiates salvation before anyone is born. God knows the people He creates. He calls and predestines them, knowing all the days of their lives (Psalm 139:16). In Romans 8:28-30 Paul lays out an unbreakable chain of events:

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.

Romans 8:28-30 NLT

The golden chain of salvation is the five unbreakable links between foreknow, predestine, call, justify, and glorify. Foreknowing always leads to predestination. Predestination always leads to calling. Calling always leads to justification. Justification always leads to glorification. Once God starts the process, He will complete it by glorifying the person in heaven.

God Foreknows the People He Chooses for Election

Foreknowledge is different than foreknowing. Foreknowledge is about factual information. Foreknowing is the intimate knowing of a person. This means that God is capable of much more than simply knowing who will choose Him in the future. Foreknowledge alone reduces election to merely a confirmation of a person’s choice. The more personal foreknowing means the following are true:

  • God intimately knows the people He elects.
  • God creates people for different purposes (some for noble and some for ignoble as in Romans 9:14-16).
  • God is in control of the entire creative process. He knows what He is doing when He creates each person.
  • God has the first and final decision as to who will be elected to eternal life.

All of this means that the state of a person at creation is not random. It’s not like God created 10 billion people with random characteristics, then looked into the future to see which ones would choose Him, and then predestined those particular ones. No. Instead, He intentionally loves the person and predestines him or her at the time of creation, knowing they will be in heaven.

This makes sense given that God is in control of everything. Shouldn’t the God of the universe have the final say in who will be with Him for eternity? God favors people and then creates them. Everyone God wants to be in heaven will be there. No one that God doesn’t want to be there will be there.

This might sound unfair, but how it sounds doesn’t make any difference because God is creator and is in control (He is sovereign). Election, therefore, is not a conditional process that puts the power of choosing within the person. Election is unconditional because the power to choose is God’s. No one deserves to be elected to heaven. It is only God’s mercy and love that elects some but not others.

If life is predetermined, how is it worth living? God knows everything but we don’t. We don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t know the particular people God will call. God invites us to participate in sharing His Good News. God’s ways, His capacity to reason, are higher than ours. He can manage knowing everything while relating to us who know very little. Yes, He has the advantage.

It’s because of our sinful nature that we want to rebel against an ultimate authority that can decide the fate of all living creatures (see Genesis 3 and Ecclesiastes 6:10 NLT version). Left to ourselves, we’d like to be in control of our destiny (not a good thing). But as Christians, we know that God being in control is not only reality, it is far superior. We can let God be God. We can be thankful He loves and cares for us.

Learn more about election in 40 Questions About Salvation
Learn more about the golden chain of salvation
Learn more about resting in God’s favor
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Genuine Healing Lasts For Eternity

Genuine Healing Lasts For Eternity

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Reading time: 5 minutes

Seek healing now. You don’t have to wait for heaven. What happens in this life has relevance for all of eternity. First and foremost is whether a person has a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. A relationship with Jesus has significance right now, not only after this life.

God knew all the days of your life before you were even born (Psalm 139). The history of what Jesus has done is significant; your history is important too. The healing you receive today will help you endure the remainder of your life on earth. All that Christ has done for you is far more powerful than any sin you’ve experienced (or committed).

If history was irrelevant, then Jesus, after His resurrection, would have no need to appear with the holes in His hands and feet. But His sacrifice is part of who He is. We praise God for who He is and what He has done for us.

What Is Healing?

Every human will heal a cut, bruise, or injury in basically the same way. We can look at healing from several different perspectives:

  • Healing is restoring function back to normal but it could also be improving function beyond previous limits.
  • Healing is the removal of the disease of sin.
  • Healing is knowing the truth on an experiential level (in the heart, not only the head) so that it overcomes the falsehoods spread by evil and caused by sin.

What are some things that healing is not?

  • Healing does not mean the erasure or numbing of memories.
  • Healing is not coping with pain (through distraction).
  • Healing is not forgetting about sin.

When God says He forgets our sins, He does not mean this literally. He is condescending to us to help us understand that we do not have to worry about Him reminding us of our sins. God knows everything. He doesn’t forget anything. But He certainly also has dealt with sin once and for all.

The Healing of Memories

The healing of a memory means the pain of the memory is neutralized, but the memory itself is retained. It’s the same for our bodies. The healing of a cut might leave a scar, however, the pain is gone and function is restored.

The nature of healing is to remember personal history, see the truth in what happened, and no longer be negatively affected by it. Love doesn’t keep a record of wrong. That is, it doesn’t keep score and demand payment for deficits. But that doesn’t mean that all such negative events are permanently erased.

A parent might go through a great deal trying to love their child. It can be painful, but because the parent loves the child, there is no need to forget about the pain. The felt love more than makes up for the difficulty. It helps us know what we consider valuable. It helps us know we wouldn’t change anything if we could have a do-over.

Consider another example of being shot. Suppose an evil person “X” breaks into a home, shoots people, and leaves with valuables. This would be a traumatic event! For victims to declare that they are fully healed from such an event, they should be able to forgive “X” and view the gun without being retraumatized. This would undoubtedly involve recalling the events, but the sting would no longer be there.

What Will Healing Be Like In Heaven?

In heaven, believers will retain all their memories from their earthly lives. They will continue to recognize who they are and where they came from. They will continue to understand who Jesus is. Jesus died for our sins. He is our savior. The intimacy we develop with Him while on earth is real. The time spent knowing Jesus in this life is not in vain.

Some people believe that God will erase all memories related to sin or negative events — presumably because we won’t be able to handle the pain. But because we are made in God’s image, we can learn to view evil and sin from God’s perspective. Any negatives are manageable from a position of hopeful strength that we will have in full in heaven.

To believe that our experiences will be forgotten is to discount this life as unreal or unimportant. I would not want my memories erased upon entering heaven. My suffering in this life counts for something. Remembering the bad times helps me appreciate the good times that are only possible because of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

From the perspective of heaven, present day events will be completely disarmed and unable to cause distress, but at the same time memorable. While completely safe in the presence of Jesus, negative memories will have no destructive power. This same healing can take place today, although not to the same degree.

The reality of who God is, including what we learn by experiencing His creation, will survive into heaven. God has granted us consciousness by giving us life. I see no reason why that consciousness would be wiped clean upon entering heaven.

If certain memories were to be completely erased, this would involve an editing process. It would make today’s suffering irrelevant for eternity. Suffering has meaning. Jesus’s sacrificial work has meaning. I can’t see how it would be possible to appreciate Jesus in heaven if we don’t remember what He saved us from.

Instead, memories will be transformed by the truth so that they do not cause pain. The beauty of understanding memories this way is that it maintains a continuity between this life and the next. You can receive healing today because God’s truth is relevant today and for eternity. Eternity begins for you the moment you become a believer in Jesus Christ.

Learn more about healing and eternity.
Will we remember our previous lives in heaven?
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Increase Motivation By Developing Conviction

Increase Motivation By Developing Conviction

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Convictions produce motivation to accomplish goals. A laundry list of goals is not motivating in itself. To maximize motivation, you need to know how important something is to you and why it is important. When you are motivated from within like this, the motivation cannot easily be taken from you.

What is apathy and what causes it? Apathy is the opposite of motivation. If apathy is a lack of concern, then motivation is concerned enough to act. The energy required to act is worth the effort because the cause matters to you.

Burnout Saps Motivation

Other concepts related to apathy include depression or burnout. Burnout results from attempting something that is beyond your capacity to achieve, refusing to give up, and ignoring self-care. Burnout does not happen overnight. Take a look at this 12 stages of burnout infographic.

People become burned out when the cause is motivating but the goal or timeframe is unrealistic. For example, wanting to feel better self-worth by working harder is a no-win situation. Working harder cannot permanently build self-worth. It might temporarily feel better, but the feeling will wear off when the achievements slow down.

Imbalance Saps Motivation

Becoming overfocused on superficial pursuits can also drain motivation. The activity can be positive like exercise or negative like alcohol consumption. In extreme use, anything can become unhealthy. Anything that becomes a substitute for connecting with God is unhealthy in the long term. That’s because life becomes imbalanced.

Exercise up to a point provides great benefits, but if pushed to an extreme it becomes harmful. The body wears out. The time is not well spent. Other underutilized activities have untapped potential.

In the case of exercise, the effect is directly physical. In the case of stress (burnout), the effect is indirect, but no less demotivating. Hope thrives on seeing results from the effort spent. If nothing you can do will produce results, the situation is hopeless. Progressing in burnout moves toward increasingly diminished margins of return.

What is conviction? It’s not really any different than faith.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1 ESV

Faith is conviction. The most important things in life are the spiritual unseen realities. If you have faith in a bridge, you will cross it. If you are fearful you won’t. Having conviction about the strength of a bridge means you are convinced that the bridge will support your weight. Therefore, you can see that faith leads to motivation and motivation to good works. If you fully believe something is true, how can you not act on what you know?

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

James 2:14-17 ESV

So then, what if you are not motivated? What if your life feels directionless? What if you suffer from apathy or depression? Some situations like losing a loved one or losing a job naturally result in grief. While grieving, people are expected to feel motivated. So there is definitely a time to put activity aside and just be. Aside from grief and a physical health problem, there is a good chance that feeling lethargic is a lack of conviction.

Conviction is faith and faith will always point to some action. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when discussing having even a small amount of faith. The smallest amount of pure faith is largely motivating!

Afterward the disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that demon?” “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.

Matthew 17:19-20 NLT

Learn more about the difference between being stubborn and being tenacious.
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A Correct Theology Is Life Changing

A Correct Theology Is Life-Changing

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Given that life can often be challenging, a robust theology is one of the easiest ways to save yourself from unnecessary heartache.

Imagine going on a journey and coming to a fork in the road. Should you go left or right? The two paths might appear to go in the same basic direction, but over time they diverge. If you make a wrong choice early on in life, it can take years to backtrack and go the right way.

If you read the Bible the wrong way, you can end up seeing only what you want to see or what you think it says, instead of what it actually says. The Bible is the only source of truth that describes the reality of creation. But, it is also authored by God so that only with the help of His Spirit, can we understand what it says.

Correct Theology Requires Accurate Interpretation

Developing a theology means conducting a review of the Bible’s main teachings about God and life.

The Bible’s words of truth must be interpreted. The challenge with any written word is determining what the original author meant. Words are simply labels for concepts and meanings. What you call something matters very little. But the meaning we feel and understand in our hearts, our heads, or our spirits — that is everything. As you might see, this is why communication can be so prone to misunderstanding. Words can mean totally different ideas to different people.

Each person has a distinct identity (or personality). Each person also has their own unique experiences. The combination of unique experiences and the interpretation of those experiences creates diversity. Diversity can increase the potential for rich experiences, but as it does, it can just as easily increase the potential for gross misunderstanding. When you are trying to communicate with others, pay attention to how your experiences shape your understanding. Be patient with the time it takes to synchronize your inner meanings with someone else’s perspectives.

Correct Theology Leads To Confident Living

A correct theology keeps your mind in sync with your creator. Confident living doesn’t mean perfect living without mistakes or difficulties. But it does mean peaceful living because God is in control. Knowing the truth and walking in it is confident living. God handles the errors. God makes the corrections as needed to keep us on the right path.

The LORD directs the steps of the godly.
He delights in every detail of their lives.
Though they stumble, they will never fall,
for the LORD holds them by the hand.

Psalm 37:23-24 NLT

How to Develop a Correct Theology

Read the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to help you interpret. If you go to the source, you will have the best opportunity to understand the truth. However, it’s also possible to be blinded by particularly negative life experiences. These experiences can inject false beliefs and motivations into our lives. They cloud the truth, making it difficult to see clearly.

The Christian journey is not meant to be traveled alone. God gives us other people with various and diverse gifts of the Spirit to help the community of all believers to thrive. I believe it’s important to develop convictions about the major teaching of the Bible in areas like the following:

  • God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. My study of the Bible has led me to conclude that God’s sovereignty has greater significance than man’s free will. God, as creator, can change man so that man’s will is in line with God’s heart. But man, without God’s complete help, cannot overcome sin. Yes, man has free will, but only within the system of life that God has created. It is an illusion to think that man can have complete free will apart from God. God holds creation together by His power (Colossians 1:16-17).
  • Are believers eternally secure in their salvation, or can they lose it (and potentially gain it back again)? See my other posts for my views on why believers have eternal security, even though they must still persevere in their faith.
  • Does a non-believer use faith to believe in God? Or does God initiate regeneration, giving people the faith to believe? See 1 Peter 1:3-5 below which shows that “God caused us to be born again” and it is “by God’s power we are being guarded through faith for a salvation.”

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

1 Peter 1:3-5 ESV

I found 40 Questions About Salvation by Matthew Barrett to be instrumental in explaining the theology of the Bible with regard to salvation. When you study the Bible to develop correct theology, I guarantee it will be life-changing.

Learn more about interpreting the Bible.
Learn more about eternal security.
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Jesus Will Never Reject His Children

Jesus Will Never Reject His Children

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Reading time: 4 minutes

How would it change your life if you knew that Jesus will never reject a believer like you? Life is hard with many difficult situations to endure (death, pain, suffering). God asks us to believe He is perfect love despite sometimes allowing terrible circumstances. Real faith is required to look beyond life’s negative events and see God’s love.

Fortunately for us, God gives us His Holy Spirit, enabling us to see God by faith. He makes profound promises about His relationship with us. If you are a believer, uncertainty and rejection die with your belief in Jesus’s death and resurrection. Certainty and acceptance are possible as faith sees the reality of God’s kingdom in the present moment, even though it isn’t fully realized, yet.

Never Rejected, No, Never

Jesus explains the kind of salvation he offers in John 10.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

John 10:27-29 ESV

In the clause “and they shall never perish” John uses the double negative with the aorist subjunctive, which is a very emphatic way of declaring that something will not happen in the future. Jesus is categorically excluding the slightest chance of an apostasy by his sheep. A literal translation would be something like, “They shall not, repeat, shall not ever perish in the slightest.”

Christian Theology, M. J. Erickson, Baker Book House, 1985, pg. 992

This kind of assurance is truly Good News. The Gospel, without such security, would be a different gospel than the Bible teaches. Can you imagine believing you will be in heaven today, but tomorrow fearing God’s eternal wrath believing you have been ejected from God’s family? Then with repentence the next day believing you will be in heaven? Then rejected again when you sin? The Bible says this is impossible because Jesus’s death was sufficient for all time (past, present, future). If it lacks the power to keep a person saved, Jesus would need to die all over again (Hebrews 6:4-6). Thankfully, God is all powerful rendering such worries unwarranted.

Never Rejected, But Doubting

Even with such direct statements of eternal security, believers must contend with the spiritual forces of fear and doubt. God would have us strengthen our trust in Him against these principalities and powers.

What might cause someone to doubt their salvation? It’s typically a sin. It’s hard to face when we do something cruel to someone else. The guilt can cause us to believe God will reject us. Jesus’s sacrifice means there is no longer condemnation for believers. Such forgiveness can seem to be too generous to believe, but that is the Good News of the Gospel! When this wonderful generosity is accepted with humility, it creates a heart response of gratefulness rather than a desire to sin more (Romans 5:20–6:3).

What about when someone sins against us? We might learn (come to believe) that we are not worth being saved. Present-day experiences can trigger memories of events that were intensely harmful. Following are some situations that might dig up the past:

  • Being lied to
  • Being ignored
  • Being interrupted
  • Waiting (uncertainty)
  • Being teased
  • Being criticized
  • Invasion of personal space

What do these have in common? They all can communicate insignificance (some directly and some more subtly):

  • Being lied to -> can’t trust or be trusted
  • Being ignored -> not worth the time or engagement
  • Being interrupted -> voice is not important or worth hearing
  • Waiting (uncertainty) -> don’t deserve good things
  • Being teased -> inferior
  • Being criticized -> defective
  • Invasion of personal space -> don’t have a valuable self that is worth protecting

These will likely cause everyone some distress, but people who have experienced abuse might recall the deep distress of older abuse. Some people have become resilient enough to overcome the negative experiences. The difference has to do with a person’s self-image. The weaker the self-image, the easier it is to allow negative spiritual forces to overwhelm with falsehood, intensifying the pain to crushing levels.

The combination of (1) significant past negative treatment (2) current triggering negative treatment, and (3) preying spiritual forces can be enough to cause people to question their status before God.

But as we have seen, Jesus is emphatic that believers are securely His. The song Love Still Bids You Welcome captures this well. Even though we sin, God holds onto us with a grip that does not slip. Anyone who has tasted God’s goodness would never want to let go of God, but even so because of our weakness, we must rely on God’s strength.

He will not cast you out. Whoever enters in will forever dwell with Him. A believer cannot be rejected by God; he or she is a child of God forever.

Learn more about God’s goodness amidst tragedy.
Listen to the song sung at CCF.
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The Mind-Blowing Good News Gospel

The Mind-Blowing Good News Gospel

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Reading time: 3 minutes

What is the Good News of the Gospel? Those who believe God raised Jesus Christ from the dead and testify to this publicly will be saved (have the assurance of eternal life). The Good News is nothing short of astonishing. When it is considered at face value, it should sound unbelievable. Can I really have freedom for free? Believing (having faith) doesn’t cost us anything, but it cost Jesus His life.

If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.

Romans 10:9-10 NLT

Good News is Permanent

Believers have eternal life. Eternal life is unending because God transforms us from spiritual death to spiritual life. Eternal life starts the day you first believed. Christ’s work on the cross cuts away our sin and forever destroys the record of our sin. Christ living in believers provides them the hopeful assurance of sharing in His glory (Colossians 1:27; 3:3-4).

You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.

Colossians 2:13-14 NLT

Good News is Complete

God forgives all our sins, not some. All includes past, present, and future sins. If it didn’t include future sins, Christ would need to be crucified again. It would mean that His death was not sufficient. But Christ has defeated death once and for all time. He has forever changed how believers relate to God. We have a new relationship with God as friends, not enemies. This new relationship is based on love, not fear.

This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

Colossians 1:21-22 NLT

Good News is Faith-Based

Having been reconciled with God, we are close to God. We can approach Him with boldness. We have no need for fear, doubt, or uncertainty. We can know with full assurance that we are blameless. This has nothing to do with our efforts, but only with Christ’s effort on our behalf. We must fully place our trust in Christ for salvation. There is no room for the belief that our effort in any way has the power to save. To consider other options is to deviate from the Gospel message found in the Bible.

But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News.

Colossians 1:23 NLT

Did any of us earn the right to be saved? No. Was there anything we could do to persuade God to save us? No. It is only because of Christ’s initiative and plan to defeat death that being reconciled to Him is possible. Once a person becomes aware of God’s goodness, love, and mercy, there would be no reason to give that up. There is no better love, no higher power to run to. Once saved and adopted into the family of God, there isn’t anything a believer can do to become unsaved. The gift of salvation is that amazing.

More about eternal security.
More on understanding Colossians 1:23
How Paul supports eternal security in Colossians
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