Lena's Comments 3-5-05

How enlightening is that? God gave Him authority over everyone, but is everyone living in and under the blessing of that authority and rule? He gives eternal life to each one you give Him... That part does not sound as inclusive as the first part, especially when He defines eternal life as truly knowing God and truly knowing Jesus Christ (Jesus, by the way, means "Savior"- as in, He’s become the one who has saved me from myself, from the world’s ways, and from hell. Then "Christ" means "Lord", actually this related to the name LORD in the OT, meaning, "there is NO other than this. Could we say this in our lives? There is no other one than this? Like He’s every reason I live and breathe and think and love and go on, etc? See for most of us, at least in the USA, Jesus is our afterthought, He’s the one we go to when all else fails us, the one we think of when Sunday comes, that might be "Savior", but He’s not esteemed as "LORD") So anyway, eternal life is not obtained or defined as saying a rote prayer and then living all of our lives in some kind of false assurance that when/if we die we will miss the gateway of hell. Eternal life is defined as knowing God and knowing His Son as BOTH Savior and LORD, that process and the continuance is eternity.
How did the Lord Jesus Christ guard His disciples? How did He keep them? # 1 they followed Him. In their following Him, He made it a point to be their Lord and show them by demonstration of His life, by demonstration of laying down His life, that He was truth. He prayed for them and took time for them, gave His life over to their teaching and training. He did this with great purpose in mind, to pass on who His Father is and who He is to them, as they would then know who they are in Him. Why would the Lord of all have to ask the Father to keep the disciples safe? From whom or what? Evil forces. He knew full well and by experience that they saw, there is an enemy of God out to get any disciple’s faith. Having faith is one thing, keeping it is another. Keeping it IS eternal life. Satan wants us to burn in eternal death with him, he does not want God to succeed in saving anyone from that flame, and he wants pleasure in knowing he stole anyone out of God’s hands. Satan hates us-period. Anytime he lies in telling us how unfair God is etc., shut him down. He is lying! He hates you, he lies to you. God does not lie to us. Satan wants us to misunderstand God and His words, this way we won’t walk with God and so he wins a fight for our souls. I’m determined to be a disciple and make disciples. Jesus was more determined, to the point of laying down His life as a ransom for me/us. That much was at stake! Eternity was/is at stake. Vs 17 says make them holy by teaching the truth? I looked in KJV and the concordance. This is saying sanctify them by truth- your word is truth. This means we can only be holy by truth. If we never submit our lives to truth, never give our lives over to His continual words, we can’t be holy, and He calls us to be holy.
Isn’t it awesome that Jesus saw so far off, that He saw you and I, and prayed for our faith? That He knew our faith would be under attack and under a challenge of an enemy? There is only one way this can be accomplished. By becoming of the same mind, same faith, same behavior, same goals, same spirit as God. It really takes the word of God to bring the truth to us of the Father’s love for us, to bring in us a desire to know Him more and make Him known.