1 John Chapter 3 Verses 18 – 20

· I’m going to go on record and say that the last thing the enemy wants you to have is assurance in your heart of hearts towards God. Assurance is confidence, trust, faith, steadfastness, certainty, even determination… tenacity and poise. It means that you are fully convinced and sure of something to the point that you just move onto something else.

· Dumb example. The chair you’re sitting on, by the laws of physics, you’re assured that you won’t fall through it. Can you imagine what this room would be like filled with people unassured of the chairs they are sitting on? Chaos! We wouldn’t get anything done. Dumb example but a caricature of a primary strategy of the enemy.

· If you and I grow to assurance of God’s love for us, God’s forgiveness and acceptance of us entirely through the blood of Jesus Christ, assured of God’s integrity and completely confident in His Word just like you are in that chair you’re plunked in now…, then man, the mind games he plays on us become powerless.

· “Oh, you are such a wretch…, and you call yourself a Christian!?” HA, for real! High Five! AND ITS HIM that calls me a Christian!? It’s incredible, isn’t it? But hey, He does it! “Has God really said? In the day you mess with that sin you won’t surely die!” HA! Great try, dork! You already did that one. I read about it and you’re right! I won’t die but I will DIE! And I get that, understand that, know that…, because God can’t lie…

· And now what? You walk around, every day…, confident in the grace and forgiveness of God through the blood of Jesus Christ and confident of the word of God even over the circumstance of the day. NOT OF THIS WORLD for real for real!

· Now, what’s the catalyst? Is it knowledge? Hearing enough sermons to convince you of all of this? Taking enough classes? Putting in enough study time? Seeing miraculous things every day? Actually no. Judas saw miracle after miracle. Heard the word of God day after day. Sat through obviously perfect sermons. Even himself hung out with Jesus and knew Him intimately… AND, the Bible calls him the son of perdition… the son of Satan.

· So, what’s the catalyst? How is it that this assurance and confidence and courage and certainty and determination becomes the state of my heart of hearts? John says BY THIS we KNOW that we are of the truth and SHALL assure out hearts before Him…by what? By laying down ourselves for the sake of serving the Lord and serving others…

· I’d rather just learn myself into this strength…, but the way up is down. For the Son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. If any of you desires to be great, let him become the servant of all. If any of you desires to come after Me let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me daily. Faith is action. Faith is living like and acting like God is telling the truth. This is was assured people do… And it is by faith that mountains move…

· How strong a person does it take to move a mountain? It is by faith that we grow in strength. And faith always looks like agape… By this… Love is the catalyst. Living for self is the disease. The disease that destroys assurance… Exactly what the enemy desires for me… AND, check this out…

1 John Chapter 3 Verse 21

· John throws in this bonus point that if we are walking with the Lord, in alignment with our own conscience, then we in effect take away the opportunity of the enemy to strip away our confidence.

· Even though we are to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, when we know to do right and we choose to do right, this has a strong effect on our minds. We know this right!? No cognitive dissonance to deal with. No internal war to deal with. This is why sin doesn’t affect our salvation but it certainly effects who we are. Our mood. Our attitude. Even our personality…

· The more you cross yourself the weaker you become. This is why James 1:8 says a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways… And let me tell you one more thing on this topic. Sin to you and sin to me is clear in the Bible but there are other sins for you and sins for me that are individual to us. What’s that mean?

· For example. If God has told me to not waste two hours sitting through a movie, well, that’s not in the Bible…, but I better not do it…, or that is sin to me. But then if you do it, I also have no right to scoff at you…, because to you, that’s not sin…, your conscience is not defiled. Paul explained this perfectly in 1 Corinthians 8:1-13…

1 John Chapter 3 Verses 22 – 24

· These three verses have to be taken together and cannot be isolated to fit what we want. Verse 22 essentially has been used to say that if we keep the commandments of God then we are in the driver seat and we can name what we want and claim what we’ve named and with enough faith, God will give us anything we ask for. That is just ridiculous…. Here’s why…

· To ascribe to any belief such as that is to say that God is not all knowing and perfect and good. If I have to name it for God to deliver it and that is the best thing for me then God is less than me. AND, if I have to think it up and the desire for whatever it is has to or even does originate from me for what I should have in my life, then God is not all knowing and He is not perfect and He is not good. So, all word faith movements are absolutely false because they all deny God for who He is!

· Now, these verse together. The commandment, singular, of God is this…, believe, place your whole bet, on Jesus Christ and live like Him to each other. God has commanded you to do nothing else. Nothing else. And anything done in the name of faith apart from this is evil. Good intentions and all…, its is against the heart of God. This is everything. This is abiding in Christ. This is Christianity…

· This is to abide in the power of the Holy Spirit, this is to abide in the blood of Jesus and this is to abide in relationship with the Father. Do you see “abide” three times in this final verse? And that abiding brings forth assurance, and assurance brings forth strength!