Foreknew = To know beforehand = A beautiful promise of God for you today.

Dear Church Family:  Here we are in our fourth week of our series, “How the Gospel Changes Us.”  Last week we discussed the fruit of faith that is our repentance.  Our response to the gospel is a delightful, happy repentance from all of our sin that so easily separates us from the love of Christ.

Well, the weight of repentance can be heavy.  Have you ever felt like this statement, “I feel like my repentance is not enough to please God.  I know that I don't repent enough and then the weight of my limited repentance gets me discouraged enough to think that God is not pleased with me.”
 
This is a real heart felt concern that I am sure we all struggle with.  Let’s confront that thinking and destroy those persistent thoughts with the Truth of what God has done to guarantee our salvation.  We can find these glorious truths in Romans 8:28-39.  Now unfortunately, some people think that the following doctrinal answers to combat the above thinking is a forbidden, ugly, desert that we should not walk through.  The reality is that God meant the following doctrines to be some of the most beautiful and loving territory in Scripture.  Are you ready?  Here it is straight from Scripture. God foreknew you, God predestined you, God called you, God justified you, and God glorified you.  That is what the Bible says.  These promises are for us to rejoice in and not run away or shrink back from.  Let’s just chose the first one, God has foreknown you from eternity to eternity.  This simply means that God has fixed a special attention upon you from the beginning of Creation.  Does that not create joy and happiness in your soul?  We are to delight in God over His foreknowledge of us.  Lets apply this Truth to the original statement above... This means that your salvation has its origin not in your repentance but in the mind and counsel of God before the Creation of the world.  Did you get that?  That is how much God loves you.  The foreknowledge of God can also be translated the "forelove of God."  He knew you from before the Creation of the world with intimate love to give you salvation and redemption.  Pause… breathe that in again.  This means that our salvation is as secure and settled as the God who foreknew us and foreloved us before the Creation of the world.  Romans 8:28-39, tells us that our inheritance of salvation is God’s doing, it is rooted in God before the beginning of time.  We did nothing to gain it and we can nothing to lose it.  So, how should our faith be producing repentance?  Jesus calls us to repentance not from a begrudgingly heart or under the weight of condemnation, “for there is no more condemnation in Christ Jesus” (8:31). This truth of God’s foreknowledge of our salvation is graciously and lovingly given to us to enjoy and then fuel the increase of our production of repenting from sin.   This kind of love produces repentance.  God’s love He put upon you before the creation of the world is reason to repent of sins today.

Let these truths of Romans 8:28-39 create a DELIGHTFUL, JOYFILLED REPENTANCE.

I look forward to celebrating these truths with you on Sunday as we worship together, Steve

Please do not forget about the Elder affirmation that we will celebrate at the end of the worship service on Sunday.