Faith & Writing
Faith · The Heart of It

What I Want You to Know

About your Savior, your God, and how it all fits together

If I could hand you one thing to carry for the rest of your life, it would not be a system or a stack of arguments. It would be a Person, and the shape of how it all fits. Everything else on these pages is detail; this is the heart. So here it is, the way I most want you to know your Savior and your God.

You were made for a relationship

Before there was a single rule to keep, there was a God walking with people "in the cool of the day" (Genesis 3:8). He did not make you for a transaction or a performance. He made you for Himself, to be known and to know Him. That is the thread running through the whole Bible, from the garden to the city: a love that simply will not quit. (The long version is The Whole Story.)

He came after you Himself, and He won

When we broke it and hid, He did not send a memo. He came, in person, "God with us" (Matthew 1:23). And at the cross He did not merely pay a fine; He won a war, breaking the power of sin and death and the devil and throwing the door back open (Colossians 2:15; see What the Cross Did). Hear this clearly: the fight is already won. You are not waiting to find out how the story ends. You are deciding whether you are in it.

Salvation is that relationship, not a ticket

You cannot earn your way to God; it is grace, a gift, from first to last (Ephesians 2:8-9). And it is not a card you sign once and file away. It is a living relationship you stay in, the way a branch stays joined to the vine, drawing all its life from Him: "Abide in me, and I in you" (John 15:4). So we can say it in three breaths: I have been saved, I am being saved, I will be saved, all of it His grace, all the way through (see The Security of Salvation).

Your "yes" is real, and it matters

Here is the mystery I want you to hold with both hands and never flatten. God is completely sovereign, and your choices are genuinely, weightily real. Both at once. He is great enough to hand His creatures true freedom and still bring His whole plan home without losing a thread. The clearest window Scripture gives is Esther: she "may have come" to her place "for such a time as this," and yet if she stays silent, deliverance will rise from somewhere else regardless (Esther 4:14). Her choice was real and it mattered, and God's purpose would stand. So will yours. Your decisions are not theater. Choose Him, and keep choosing Him (Deuteronomy 30:19). The stakes are real, even rebel angels were cast down (2 Peter 2:4), and the generation God carried out of Egypt fell in the wilderness through unbelief, "examples… written for our admonition" (1 Corinthians 10:11). What you decide truly counts.

Grace gives the power; you do the loving

It was never really about rule-keeping. It was always about love. Grace is not permission to stay exactly as you are, and it is not a ladder you climb to earn His favor; it is the power to become who you were made to be. "Work out your own salvation… for it is God which worketh in you" (Philippians 2:12-13). And what it works in you is love, for God and for people, because "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Romans 13:10). And Jesus made that love startlingly concrete: the hungry you feed, the stranger you welcome, you do it to Him, "inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these… ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40). What you do for the least, you do for your Savior. And love is not, in the end, a feeling but a doing, "if ye love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15), and its very summit is sacrifice, "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). He loved us that way first; we only follow. And this is never a private affair: sin wounds other people, and so does the good we leave undone, "to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (James 4:17). The love you withhold is felt by someone; the love you give reaches them, and reaches Him. You will not always understand the why, and you do not have to, obedience can trust ahead of understanding, "lean not unto thine own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5). For underneath every command is one thing: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself, "on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40). Which means sin, at its root, is simply a failure to love. A faith that loves is a faith that does (see Hebrews 11 and Hyper-Grace).

The King already reigns, so don't be afraid

Do not let anyone frighten you with charts and headlines about the end. Christ is on the throne now (the kingdom is already here), and the unseen is more real than the seen, the chariots of fire are on the hills whether your eyes can make them out or not (2 Kings 6:17). Nothing in all creation can tear you out of the love of God in Christ (Romans 8:38-39). Live ready, live unafraid, and live as someone whose King has already won.

And if you ever wander, come home

Because the relationship is real, you can walk away from it, and you may, for a while; most of us do, in one way or another. But hear the most important thing. The son who demanded his inheritance and "wasted his substance with riotous living" (Luke 15:13) came limping home rehearsing an apology, and never got to finish it: "when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him" (Luke 15:20), and called for the best robe, a ring, and a feast, "for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found" (Luke 15:22-24). That is the heart of your Father. There is no place so far, no failure so deep, that it is too late to come home, as long as you will come. He is already watching the road for you, ready to run. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 31:3).

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So, in one breath

You are loved beyond your understanding by a God who made you for Himself, came after you in person, won the victory at the cross, reigns even now, and holds the door open. You cannot earn Him, and you do not have to; you only have to trust Him, abide in Him, love like Him, and, whenever you stray, come home. He will be running before you reach the gate.

A blessing · Numbers 6:24-26

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: the LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

If you want to go deeper

Each thread above opens into its own page: the whole story, what the cross did, the security of salvation, the vine, the kingdom already here, and the rest at the Faith page. But if you only ever keep this one, you will have the heart of it.

Carry these

Read them in context. Links go to BibleHub.

The heart of everything on these pages, gathered in one place. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub.