Adoption is War part five
We have been looking at the importance of putting on the helmet of salvation.
By putting on the helmet of salvation we mean, protecting our thinking from lies by remembering and enjoying what God has accomplished for us through Jesus Christ.
To help us get a picture of what it looks like to do this, we have begun working our way through several lies that Christians are tempted to believe.
A second lie we are tempted to believe is that we are too big a mess to ever be able to do what God has called us to do.
We look at our lives and say,
“You know what? I am a mess. And I have been a mess for a long time. And I think that I am always going to be a mess. I am never going to become the kind of person that God wants me to be.”
It almost feels holy to think this because we are like, "hey, I am serious about sin and I see it in my life and I hate it."
But do you know what? When we get to the point where we want to give up because we think we will never make it, we are not only saying something about ourselves as Christians. We are also saying something about God and the salvation he has provided.
God tells us His great plan for us in Ephesians 1:4ff,
“...even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”
Do you see what is happening? God, before the foundation of the world, before he even created the world selected us as believers for the purpose of being holy and blameless and above reproach when we stand before him in eternity. God has a plan that has been going on since before the beginning of time that we might be holy. And so when we look at God and we say, “Ah, you know what? I don’t think I am going to make it." We are not saying something so much about ourselves. We are actually saying something about the eternal God’s power to do what he has been planning to do from before the beginning of the world, which is to present us holy and blameless and above reproach.
When you begin to wonder as a Christian if you are going to make it you need to put on the helmet of salvation. When you are tempted to give up you need to say to yourself something like, “No, this is what God is committed to. And, yeah, I am weak. Yeah, you are right, Satan. I ... if this were up to me, if my salvation were up to me, then I would be done. I wouldn’t even make it. I might as well stop now. But my salvation is not up to me. I am being saved by God. And I know God will down what he has promised to do.”
It obviously can be a matter of wisdom to take care of certain areas of our lives before we step out and make certain sacrificial choices like adoption. Of course! But that kind of wise planning is very different from a general hopelessness where you just sit back and do nothing about sin because you feel like you do not have the power or resources to do what God has called you to do.