GIFT NUMBER 5: SALVATION
By Deb Forbes copyright 2008Salvation is the 5th gift from God I want to look at. All the gifts we have looked at so far have been connected and Salvation fits right in with the rest of them. First God gives us life and love and forgiveness and sends his Son Jesus. He sent his son so that he could make a way for us to be with Him or to give us salvation from our sins. This is seen in 1 Thes. 5:9 “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ”KJV. Salvation is necessary because we have done things that keep us from God. It is like when we were kids our parents loved us and provided for us and set rules that were good for us to keep us safe, but as kids we always had to try things anyway and our parents had to step in and help us or save us from ourselves. It is the same with God, he gives us everything we need and loves us, but we still stray and sin as it says in Rom. 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” God loved us enough to save us though by sending his son. John 3: 16-1716 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.KJV”Praise the Lord for his gift of Salvation so that we are saved from our sins. All we have to do is accept this gift from God just like the other gifts. In Romans 10:9-10 it tells us how we can receive the gift of Salvation from God it says Rom. 10:9-10 9 “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”KJV It is just that simple we have to believe and confess our belief in Christ and ask to be forgiven and we shall have salvation. That’s all it takes for us to receive the gift of Salvation that God has for us. It's just as easy as receiving a Christmas gift from someone you just have to reach out and take it.
This gift of salvation from God is for everyone and at this Christmas time my prayer is that many will receive this gift from God. Once we have received the first 5 gifts I have been looking at from God, life, Jesus, love, forgiveness and salvation then the rest of the gifts I will be looking at come along with these 5 gifts. These gifts are a packaged deal that you don’t want to miss out on. Thank you Lord. God is so good and as David says in Ps 145:3 “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable”.KJV And this God is just waiting to hear from you to accept you into his family and to lovingly give you all the gifts he has for you
Gift Number 6: Hope
by Deb Forbes copyright 2008
The 6th Gift from God I want to look at is Hope. In Webster’s dictionary it says hope means “to expect with confidence”. Well the gift of hope from God is to know with confidence that 1. God is always with you; 2.God loves you, and 3. that there is something more when we die than just death. This hope then is knowing and having confidence in God and his promises. I had a very good friend that found out she had lung cancer and when they told her they said it was the worst kind and that there wasn’t any hope for her to beat the cancer. She was strong in her faith in God and she just laughed and told them I have trusted, obeyed and relied on God this far and I am not going to stop now. She was telling them that she had hope even if she had cancer because her hope was not in things here on earth but hope in God and the knowledge that even if she died she was assured a place in heaven. Jeremiah 17:7 “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is”.KJV The hope I am talking about isn’t in material things. We all have had hope that maybe we would get that job we wanted or maybe a good grade on a test but these things are just material and can’t give us anything that is forever, but the hope I am talking about is hope that leads us to living in heaven with God. When we accept Christ as our Saviour then we are assured of a place in heaven when we die. so then we have hope in things to come. Because of the gift of hope from God we have victory over death as it says in I Cor. 15:54-57 54“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”.KJV Praise God.
The gift of hope from God gives our lives meaning and the assurance that no matter what we are going through we have someone going through it with us in the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean that nothing will ever go wrong but it means that we have the confidence or hope that God has a perfect plan and that we can get through anything because he loves us and is always with us. Phil. 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”.KJV No longer do we need to feel hopeless because our hope is in the Lord. Trials and Tribulations may come our way but our strength comes in the knowledge and assurance or hope that God has it all in control and while we live we are in Gods loving arms living for him and if we die then we gain living with him in heaven. Phil. 1:21 “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”KJV So our hope is in the Lord and we can live a full, happy, abundant life because of this hope. When you feel hopeless or know someone who is feeling hopeless remember that when you have Christ in your heart then you have hope as God has promised you. Thanks be to God
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