Life And Living Part 38.

To some, "working out your own salvation" means to pick and choose what to do.

Life and Living

Part Thirty-Eight

I wrote this in response to the writer of a Faithwriter’s devotional.

The thoughts in your devotional were well-thought-out and well-written.

It seems that, near me, people are just ignoring parts of God's word or overlooking the meaning of other parts of God's word. Satan is at work.

In Matt. 16:16-19 Peter and Jesus are talking. Peter tells Jesus who he thinks Jesus is, and then Jesus tells Peter something that is from their Heavenly Father. Peter is told that he (Peter) will be given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. To find out what these keys are, we have to follow Peter's Life as told in the Bible (this is still God's word or, if we want to think of it – it is God talking).

When we see the apostles as they were given the Holy Spirit, we see Peter as the one chosen by God to present God's message.

When many in the crowd finally believed that Jesus was both Lord and Christ, they wanted to know what else they should do. Peter then told them the rest of the keys of the kingdom, and that was to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. Then, upon the forgiveness of their sins, each would be given the gift of God's Holy Spirit. We are told in other places like Paul's writings that this gift in a person identifies them as a child of God's making.

Many people ignore both repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of their sins. I am fearful that when this happens, the forgiveness of sin does not take place, and these people do not receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. If they do not have God's Holy Spirit, they do not belong to our Heavenly Father.

This is very disturbing to me. I know there is a narrow way and a broad way, but Satan is deceiving many, causing them to think they are on the narrow way, which, in fact, is really the broad way.

7/25/2020 Larry E. Whittington

Thank you.