We could not have planned, provided, or preserved our salvation!
Psalm 40:16-17
But may all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in
you;
may those who love your
salvation
say continually, “Great is
the Lord!”
17 As for me, I
am poor and needy,
but the Lord takes
thought for me.
You are my help and my
deliverer;
do not delay, O my
God!
Those who seek God will be
glad, and will know the joy of being loved by God. They will realize the
privilege of having received His mercy and grace.
Isaiah 55:6-7
“Seek
the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is
near;
7 let the wicked
forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man
his thoughts;
let him return to
the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he
will abundantly pardon.
Have you perhaps lost sight
of the amazing gift that our salvation is? Have you been distracted by the
difficulties of life and forgotten the immense privilege we have in knowing
that God has forgiven us and continues to forgive us?
Do we return to God
continually for forgiveness, forgetting our total unworthiness? Has it become
trite and normal?
God’s forgiveness is
complete, eternal; it’s based only on the Lord’s infinite grace.
The only appropriate reaction
is to exclaim how great the Lord is. Everything else should pale in comparison
to God’s grace. Every problem should become smaller, when we remember how great
our salvation is!
Have you stopped to think
about what it means to love your salvation?
Loving our salvation must
include loving the God Who planned it, and realizing that before the foundation
of the world, before we were even born, God had chosen to provide for us the only
means to escape eternal punishment.
Loving our salvation must
also include loving our Savior Jesus Christ , Who gave Himself to die on the
cross so that we could experience eternal life.
Loving our salvation must
also include remembering that the Holy Spirit seals us for eternity.
We could not have planned,
provided, or preserved our salvation. It is the wonderful gift of God!
I realize that way too
often the cares of the world obscure these wonderful truths. Way too often, my
carnal desires relegate this immense privilege to second place.
I realize that I am using
many superlatives, but even the most eloquent words could not describe the
profundity of this gift.
Those who know and
remember these truths will rejoice and exclaim the greatness of God.
How sad it is, when our
attitudes and reactions minimize the beauty of our Savior and of our salvation.
We are poor, we are needy,
as David says in the conclusion of this psalm, but God does not forget or
forsake us. Lest we forget that we can never approach God with any demands or
expectations, the psalmist reminds us that we are small.
The Apostle Paul after he
described the wonder of our salvation in Ephesians 1, prayed that God would
seal it in our hearts.
Ephesians 1:15-21
For this
reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your
love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give
thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of
him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know
what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of
his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the
immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the
working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he
raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the
heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power
and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this
age but also in the one to come.
May our God open our eyes,
and may our response be eternal gratitude and praise!
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