Assurance

The other day I was sitting in the car at the local superstore.  As I sat there, people watching waiting for our groceries to be brought out I noticed a couple women heading into the store.  In their hand each carried a mask.  As you know we are currently in the middle of some crazy times.  But this wasn't what stuck out to me.  What really stood out to me was what one lady was gripping in her other hand.  You see, in one hand a mask.  She was tightly gripping the assurance of the cloth in her right hand but in her left was a cigarette.  In one hand she held what she believed would save her from things unseen, more specifically, a virus.  Tightly gripped in her other hand was death.  It was that which both can be seen and causes over 4 million deaths a year.  The cigarette.  Then it hit me!  

When God told us through the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy that God "did not give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and discipline" He meant it.  We are living in a time of spiritual fear and we are all looking for 100% assurance that if we do certain things life will go the way we think it ought to.  Yet many of us walk around with false assurance.  It's wrong!  Nothing in this world can give us the assurance our inner most being so desires.  We are made in the image of God and nothing can satisfy that desperate longing but God.  C. S. Lewis said it this way.  “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”  

And because this is the truth for everyone, we want assurance that this is not all there is, we want assurance that we won't die, our relationships will be fixed, our marriages won't fail, and our kids will grow up to lead wonderful lives.  But we look for assurance in all the wrong places.  Hebrews 11:1 says

Now faith is the assurance of things hope for, the conviction of things not seen.

 Did you today hit your knees today and put your assurance in Jesus as much as you did the mask?  Did you hit your knees today and plead with God to give you the assurance that when this life is over you will spend eternity with Him in His glory?  Did you seek the assurance, the 100% assurance that can only come from Jesus. That lady that was grasping in one hand her false assurance yet in the other the very thing that causes death reminded me of how most of us live our lives.  In one hand we hold onto Jesus Christ the author and finisher of our faith and we love Him oh God do we love Him.  

He died a brutal death on the Cross to save us from our sins.  Yes we Love Him!  But in the other hand we hold so tightly to the false assurance of this world.  That if we just do certain things the virus wont get us.  If we push our kids hard enough they will succeed in life, if we try harder we can fix the things that are broken.  But… we can't!  There is no assurance without the Son of God.  There is no assurance without Jesus the Messiah.  You cannot have any assurance in this life other than what Jesus can give but the only way to receive that assurance is to put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.  Romans 10:9, if you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you, yes you will be saved.  Jesus must be the ruler of you life and you must believe or you will have 0 assurance for this life and the life to come.  My brother, my sister, trust in Jesus He is 100% assurance of everything you need in this life and the next.  God bless you! ​