When you remember you're God's beloved . . .

J.C. O’Hair once wrote in a poem:

If we’re on the way to glory,

Joy should fill our soul;

‘Tis done by the Holy Spirit when

The Spirit has control.

There are burdens, trials, sorrows,

But God’s abounding grace,

He says, is all sufficient for

Every single case

 

In an old sermon, Jordan said, “I’ve been telling you for four decades, I don’t care how high you get in your understanding of truth and about what God’s going to do and how exciting it’s all going to be, the first step in ‘getting out of the closet’ is just believing in God’s love for you.

“The Book of Ephesians is full of this stuff. Ephesians 1:6: ‘To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.’

“You go out in the world today and there’s a cry to be accepted, to belong, to have a connection. People spend time, money, energy, resources to gain acceptance.

"You see young people giving their lives away—drugs, sex, etc.—because they want to be accepted; they want to be loved and valued and they’ll give away their future for the fulfillment of that.

"And you know what it is—it’s an illusion because it only lasts until, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ shows up.

*****

“There’s an acceptance that never goes away when God Himself accepts you; when He meets that need, that yearn, that drive, that thirst deep down in your heart and He accepts you.

"If no one else ever did, so what?! Who’s going to last the longest? Them or Him?! Whose opinion is going to be the one that really counts in the long run?

“I know how it is—you look at yourself and you say, ‘Who could accept me?!’ You know where God the Father finds you today if you’re saved? He doesn’t find you in a performance system where you’re living up to standards and pleasing Him because of it.

“He finds you in the one place in all the universe that He’s absolutely, sublimely pleased and that’s His Son. Whew! You can relax. All that tension, all that stuff the world, the flesh and the devil throws at you.

"You can say, ‘You know what, I’m enveloped in some ever-lasting arms of love, not because of what I do, but because I’m in Christ.’

“Satan knows that no temptation’s going to succeed in your life when you remember who you are; that you’re God’s beloved.

*****

“You remember what the name ‘David’ means? Beloved. It took a David to defeat a Goliath. It took David to destroy the giant. Listen, it takes someone who KNOWS that he’s God’s beloved to win the fights in life!

“When you understand that you’re God’s beloved, what that does is it makes you a victor no matter what the Adversary . . . no matter what the world, the system, the culture, the satanic drive and flow behind that culture; no matter how your old sin nature attacks, the answer and the victory is in being God’s beloved.

"One of the things the Holy Spirit prays through Paul who prays for you and me is Ephesians 3:18-19: 'That you may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
[19] And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.’

“Notice that word ‘comprehend.’ God desires that you be able to get your mind around something and understand it.

“Colossians 1:27 says, ‘To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.’

“That’s what God wants you to know. What do you think the Adversary would want to hide from you?

"The devil doesn’t care if you pack a Bible and study it--just don’t comprehend out of that Bible what is the breadth, and the length, and the depth, and the height, and to KNOW the love of Christ, which passeth all knowledge.

“Why does He want me to know? ‘That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’ You see, the goal is to get to know something that will result in God Himself controlling your life. Even the mundane things of life, every area of your life.

“Then you move into the places where there are real challenges and struggles. The injustices of life, the harshness of life, the things that happen just because you were a bonehead, and yet He says that in all of it, 'We’re more than conquerors through Him that LOVED us.'

*****

“I John 4:10 says, ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’

“You know what love is? Love’s not going out there, saying, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ Love is what God did at Calvary when He paid for everything that’s wrong with you.

*****

“Under the law, God gave Israel a bunch of regulations about how to set things right when they were wrong and in Leviticus 27: 9-11 are rules about when something is lost and has to be replaced, how do you determine the replacement value of the thing.

“Verse 12 says, ‘And the priest shall value it, whether it be good or bad: as thou valuest it, who art the priest, so shall it be.’

“They bring the thing. They say, ‘Here’s where I’ve been damaged,’ and the priest sets the replacement value. The value that the priest placed on it, well, that’s what God says the value is.

"Who is our high priest? You remember Hebrews 10:10? The verse says, ‘By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’

“You know what your high priest says? ‘Here’s the value, here’s the way I value it. I have by one offering . . .’

“You see, if God was waiting for you to be perfect, Jesus Christ would have stayed home. He came so that He could provide perfection for you. Now, if the priest values it that way, God says, ‘That’s the way it is!’ If God values it that way, what say ye?

“When you’re working along in life, trying to figure out how God thinks about things, that’s where you start thinking.”