You'll never be abandoned on your journey, a powerful assurance of salvation that we explore in this episode. I discuss the importance of understanding that God will never leave us, regardless of our circumstances or actions. Through various scripture passages, we find reassurance that God's love and presence in our lives are unwavering. However, this promise comes with a deeper reflection: are we truly ready to have Jesus involved in every aspect of our lives? As we navigate this topic, I emphasize the significance of building a genuine relationship with Him, beyond just the initial commitment of faith. Join me as we unpack these essential truths and their implications for our daily walk with God.
Takeaways:
The assurance of salvation means you will never be abandoned on your journey with God.
God promises to be with us always, providing strength and courage in difficult times.
Our relationship with Jesus is similar to a marriage, requiring commitment and shared life together.
The biblical verses emphasize that God will never leave or forsake us, which is a source of comfort.
Acknowledging God's constant presence in our lives challenges us to reflect on our true commitment to Him.
We must consider if we genuinely desire Jesus to be part of every aspect of our lives.
Hi, welcome to the Hobo Soul podcast of road advice from the Bible and from me, Yvon Prehn someone who's a little further down the road of life. I'll talk to you every weekday for about five to 10 minutes, with periodic longer talks on serious Saturdays.
Let's get started with our topic today, which is.
Speaker B:
You'll never be abandoned on your journey, also known as the assurance of salvation.
Here's our verses that go along with it for today. The first one is from Deuteronomy 31:6, where it says, "Be strong and courageous.Don't be afraid or terrified. The Lord, your God goes with you. He will never leave you or forsake you."
The Next is Matthew:
And then the one Hebrews 13: 5&6, where it says, "Don't be obsessed with getting more material things. Be relaxed with what you have. Since God assured us, I'll never let you down, never walk off and leave you."
These are just a few of the passages in both the Old and New Testaments in our Bibles that assure us that God isn't going to abandon us. Now, we'll talk about the specifics of that in a minute, but I want to warn you that our podcast is kind of a good news, bad news message.
Now, you might wonder what could be the bad news in these wonderful promises that God will never leave us. And we'll get to that in a minute, but first, let me set up the context of these promises.
In our last podcast, we clarified the importance of being at peace with God, of becoming a Christian as an essential foundation of your walk with Jesus for a successful life now and forever. What's important to keep in mind is that becoming a Christian, becoming at peace with God, is just the start of your relationship with Him.
There's a lot more to it, and that's what we'll talk about in this one and the next four podcasts. Think about it this way. Becoming a Christian is a lot like a marriage ceremony, where two people enter into a significant and lasting relationship.
The ceremony can be quite extravagant, quite incredible, but the ceremony is not the marriage. It's what happens after the ceremony that makes the marriage.
We would think it quite odd if after the ceremony, one member scooped up all the wedding presents, left with a wave and the words, hey, it's been fun. I'll see you when I need you. That's not what a marriage is about.
A Marriage means living together, sharing, getting to know the other person, building a life with shared goals and a lifelong commitment to them. These are the things that describe an ideal marriage. And that's what Jesus wants with us.
He doesn't want us to simply grab the goody of eternal salvation and then run off and do our own thing.
It seems like many people who consider themselves Christians think that this is okay, but it isn't to say it's okay, and I hope I'm not stretching the marriage analogy too far.
It would be like saying an open marriage is okay, where you might have the legal paperwork and a ring to show you're married, but you mess around with anything and everybody that you want to that's appealing other than your spouse. That isn't a marriage, and that isn't the Christian life.
To help us understand more of what it's really about, in this and the next four podcasts, I'll be talking about some of the basic characteristics that you can expect in your relationship with Jesus. This summary is my updating and redoing of something that I heard years ago when I was involved with the Navigator Ministry in college.
They called it the Five Assurances of the Christian life, and I'm just kind of rewording some of these things for the podcast. But they're great reminders, not only just for new Christians, which is how the Navigators use them, but really for all of us.
Now, the first one is what I mentioned in the title. You'll never be abandoned on your journey, also known as our Assurance of Salvation.
This is so important because for any relationship to grow, you need to be secure in it. God wants you to be secure, eternally assured that nothing you can do will ever destroy his love for you or cause him to leave you.
From God's earliest messages to his people in the Old Testament, to Jesus final words before he left earth, to the writings of the leaders from the early church, which I quoted all of those to you as we started out. These verses assure us that we will never be abandoned.
Many of us have been abandoned at various times in our lives for various reasons, and if we've been in that situation, these promises might be hard to believe. If you were raised around Christians who perhaps were not really intentional about it, but gave you the idea that Jesus would just toss you away if you were naughty, it might be hard to believe, but in reality he never, ever will leave you, no matter what you do.
If you believe it or not, though it's true for all eternity he will never leave you. Once you are his, you are always his.
You will never be alone and you never will be. That seems like really good news that he'll never leave us. So what's the bad news now? Think about it a minute.
The reality that he'll never leave us kind of got a whole new twist the other day when I was listening to a short clip from Bishop Robert Barron where he talked about how we can know if we're truly serious about following Jesus, if we're willing to have him with us in whatever we do. He challenged us to think about the various areas of our lives if we truly want Jesus as part of them.
Of course we might in our work and home life, we might want him there. But maybe we have habits or hobbies or social media or whatever that we just would rather Jesus wouldn't be part of.
Maybe that he'd just leave us alone.
Truth be told, many of us, most of us have areas where we wish Jesus would go somewhere else for a while, or maybe we do something that we just kind of hope he doesn't notice. Bishop Barron prompted people to think about if they were really followers of Jesus, if they really wanted him to be with them always.
And it was a great, thought provoking video. But the truth of it is, we don't have a choice. For better, for worse. Good news, bad news. He is always with us. Jesus is with us everywhere.
He always, always will be. And that's the truth that assures us of our salvation.
That's all for this podcast, for transcripts, links to related material, and much more to help you learn to know, trust, apply and teach the Bible, go to www.Bible805.com
Speaker B:
Let me end with this benediction and prayer.
May you walk each day with surrounded by the gracious love of the Father, guided by the gentle wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and conscious of the astoundingly real presence of Jesus, who will walk with you until you're no more a hobo soul, no more a transient wandering heart, but at home in the kingdom prepared for you with your God forever. Amen.
