Your Past, Present and Future Wrapped Up in the Love of God

Your Past, Present and Future Wrapped Up in the Love of God

Today's Three-minute Bible Study
Print, Study and Apply
Title: Your Past, Present and Future Wrapped Up in the Love of God ------------------- Date: 3/10/2001
Keywords: "kindness" "love"
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Passage: Titus 3:3-7*

3. For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.

4. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared,

5. He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,

6. whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,

7. that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Questions

1. What characterized your life prior to becoming a believer in Jesus Christ? (v. 3) (If you haven't yet placed your faith in Jesus, click here to find out more about it.)

2. Something "appeared." (v. 4) What "appeared"?

3. What happened when this "something" appeared? (vv. 5-6)

4. As a child of God, what is your future? (v. 7)

Practical help

The short passage above gives a thumbnail sketch of your life (and mine!) on a timeline. In the PAST, to one degree or another, in one way or another, you lived in rebellion against God. Then, with no prompting from any outside source, God's "kindness" and "love" appeared on the scene. When His love showed up, He, by an act of sovereign grace, "saved" you. That saving work excluded any "work" on your part, and included God's gift to you of a cleansing that made you brand new (regeneration and renewal). The result is that NOW you are justified in His sight. That means that God does not hold you guilty for your sins. Your guilt has passed on to Jesus, who died on the cross for you. Your FUTURE in heaven is to be with God as His special heir.

Think for a moment about where you would be right now without the love of God. Helpless and hopeless - that's where! In another place in the New Testament, Paul says that those who do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ "have no hope and are without God in the world." (Ephesians 2:12)

Friend, let the love of God, which rescued you from an eternity separate from God, wash over you. Find strength to go on resisting temptation to view pornography (actually, to lead a God-honoring life in all respects!) in the realization that you are completely, perfectly, absolutely and eternally loved by almighty God.

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*"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLEŽ, Š Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission."