Thinking on Scripture

God Loves You and Wants to Save You God loves you. He wants you to spend eternity with Him in heaven, not separated from Him in the lake of fire. The Bible says God is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9), and that He “desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4). Yet every person stands condemned because of sin (Rom. 3:10, 23; 6:23). Left to ourselves, we are all headed for the lake of fire (Rev. 20:11-15). But no one has to go there. Jesus Christ went to the cross, bore our sins, paid our sin-debt in full, and cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30; Isa. 53:5-6; Rom. 5:8; 1 Pet. 3:18). Because His work is complete, God now offers eternal life as a free gift to everyone who believes in His Son as Savior....

The Believer’s Response to Stress When faced with a crisis, the believer cannot always control the first surge of fear, the automatic startle response, but he is responsible for his cognitive recalibration and volitional response that follows. God designed the human nervous system to react quickly to stimuli. A loud noise, unexpected crisis, or sudden threat may cause the body to flinch, the heart to race, and the mind to momentarily freeze. That initial response is largely involuntary. It is not evidence of spiritual failure but of creaturely physiology functioning in a fallen world. Scripture never condemns the body’s automatic alarm response. When God commands, “Do not fear,” He is not forbidding the involuntary experience of fear. Rather, He is commanding us not to surrender our thinking, decisions, or conduct to fear. Instead, we are to recover quickly by faith, bring our thoughts under the control of God’s word and choose obedience despite heightened emotion. What God addresses is the direction of the mind and will after the initial shock has passed....

Experiential Knowledge of God Experiential knowledge of God is the believer’s growing awareness of the Lord that comes through consistent obedience to His revealed will. This knowledge differs from intellectual understanding alone. A person may possess accurate doctrinal information and yet lack a deep, personal awareness of God’s presence and activity in daily life. Jesus taught that obedience creates the conditions for deeper disclosure when He said, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him” (John 14:21; cf. John 14:15; 23; 1 John 5:3)....

The Filling of the Holy Spirit The filling of the Holy Spirit is a conditional blessing available to every believer. Unlike the baptism, sealing, and indwelling ministries of the Spirit, which are permanent realities received at the moment of faith in Christ (1 Cor. 12:13; Eph. 1:13-14), the filling of the Spirit is an experiential condition that depends upon the believer’s ongoing fellowship with God. Paul commanded believers, “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18), indicating that this ministry is both a divine mandate and a repeated necessity in the Christian life. The verb “be filled” (plērousthe) in Eph. 5:18 is a present passive imperative, indicating that believers are commanded to continually permit the Holy Spirit to exercise His governing influence in their lives; the present tense denotes continuous action, the passive voice emphasizes that the Spirit performs the work of governing while the believer responds in faith, and the imperative mood reveals that this Spirit-directed life is a divine command....

God’s Logistical Support for Every Christian Logistical support is part of the believer’s riches in Christ because God sustains the Christian from salvation to glorification. The same God who saved us by grace also supports us by grace. He gives temporal provision so we can live out spiritual purpose. He gives enough strength for each day, enough wisdom for each trial, enough grace for each burden, and enough resources to accomplish His will (2 Cor. 12:9; Jam. 1:5; Heb. 4:16). The believer is never outside the Father’s care. He may be tested, stretched, humbled, or delayed, but he is never abandoned. God has declared, “I will never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you” (Heb. 13:5). Rest in that....

Managing the Mind with Divine Viewpoint biblical self-talk is the disciplined practice of directing one’s inner dialogue according to divine viewpoint rather than human viewpoint (Ps. 42:5; Rom. 12:2). Because the fallen mind naturally gravitates toward fear, distortion, anxiety, and worldly thinking (Eph. 4:17-19), believers must continually identify and replace aberrant sinful thoughts with the truth of Scripture through doctrinal intake (1 Pet. 2:2), meditation on God’s word (Ps. 1:2-3), prayer and thanksgiving (1 Th. 5:16-18), walking by faith (2 Cor. 5:7), and dependence upon the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:16; Eph. 5:18). As Christians consistently take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5; Phil. 4:8) and interpret life through the lens of God’s word rather than emotion or circumstance, they develop greater wisdom and stability....

God’s Power in the Christian

The Right to Pray to God