(Two and a half years ago I began this blog. Today is my 100th post. So I thought it would be fitting to re-post the first one I put up. 
This is what I am passionate about: 
- Enjoying God, rejoicing in grace.
- But not by abusing grace.
- Rather by using the means of grace to fully enjoy Him.)

“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” Jude 20-21

As believers we rejoice in the love of God.
We are amazed: “not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
It is all of grace.

But sometimes we feel a long way from the love of God; that God Himself doesn’t care. What can we do?

For some, there is nothing to do – except wait. If “it is all of grace”, it is God’s job to “keep” us. It is up to God to draw close to us.
But this is to misuse grace. Too many Christians excuse inaction in the name of “grace”.

It is true that it is God’s grace that “keeps” us (Jude 1)
But Jude also tells us to “keep ourselves” (same word) in the love of God (Jude 21).

Here are three things we are to do.

1. BUILD… Yourself up on the Most Holy Faith of You

The Faith

In the Bible “faith” can refer to the act of believing: “Believe in Jesus Christ”.
But it can also refer to what we believe – especially when it speaks (as it is does here, in Jude 21) of “the faith”.

In fact, this was Jude’s principal concern in writing this epistle.
He says he originally sat down to write something about “our common salvation”. But then he changed course; he felt there was something far more important he needed to address: i.e. “the faith… that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
By this he means the body of truth in the Bible concerning: who we are, who God is, and what God has done, especially through Jesus Christ. And: how we are to live as a result.
That is “the faith” that Christians are to “contend earnestly” for.

Jude was concerned because there were leaders, supposedly Christian leaders, “inside” the church (Jude 4), who were denying what the Bible teaches about sin and how we are to live a holy life. Instead, they were saying, “Because we are saved by grace, we can indulge in sin [i.e. ‘lewdness’, or sexual immorality] however we like”!
They were denying “the faith”, the basic truths taught in the Word of God – and what that means for how we are to live.

So when Jude comes to talk about how you can “keep yourself in the love of God,” this is where he begins: “Build yourselves up on the most holy faith of you” i.e. go back to “the faith”: soak yourself in what is taught in the Bible.

Build up

Take time, day by day, in the Word of God, to build yourself up – and you will know the love of God.

You can’t know someone, or know someone loves you, if you don’t know them. The better you know a person, the closer you feel towards them, the more you can be assured that they love you.
Even the world gets this. One of the most enduring pop songs of all time (revived by at least 30 artists over 70 years) goes: The more I see you, the more I want you. Can you imagine how much I love you? The more I see you as years go by…
Even the world knows this is how a good relationship grows: The more I see you, the more I love you.

If you want to walk closely with God, this is where you begin: by seeing Him often in the Word of God. That means regularly, consistently and extensively spending quality time with God and filling your mind with God and His Word.
You are not going to feel close to God, and feel the love of God, if instead you regularly, consistently and extensively fill your mind with the trash that this world offers at the expense of your time with the Lord (Psalm 119:37).

The reality of the world I live in most is the reality I will feel most. The Internet, and even TV, can be useful; but if I live in a fantasy world of TV and the Internet most of the time, that will become the dominant reality that shapes my life.
But, if it is the world of “the faith” that I live in most of the time, that will be the dominant reality that shapes my life.

Most holy faith

The false teachers that Jude contended with in this epistle were not being transformed in holiness. Jude says (in v 4) that they: “turn the grace of God into lewdness”
They read their Bibles; they knew about “grace”. They knew the Bible teaches we are saved by grace. Their response to that was: “Well, if God saves us apart from what we do, we can sin however we like” … and off they went, into all kinds of horrible sexual sins.
They read the Bible; but, they were not reading the Bible honestly. Their perverted understanding of the Bible was tearing them down, not building them up.

How do I know if I am reading the Bible to build up, not tear down?
I am reading to build up when, by reading the Bible, I am growing in holiness.
And, if I am growing in holiness, I will also be growing in experiencing the love of a holy God.

2. PRAY… in the Holy Spirit

A Two-Way Relationship

No good relationship is a one-way street. It is not enough that God is speaking to us in His Word. We also need to be speaking to God in prayer.
It’s a two-way relationship. Grace has means; prayer is a means of grace.

In the physical realm God keeps us alive by means: food to eat, and air to breathe. While we are entirely dependent upon God to keep us alive physically, He expects us to eat the bread He gives us to eat, and breathe the air He gives us to breathe. These are “means” He provides – and ordinarily, you must use those means that God, in His grace, has provided if you expect to stay alive.

Likewise, in the spiritual realm, He gives us His Word to feed upon; and He gives us the breath of prayer. A Christian cannot flourish spiritually without praying, any more than you can flourish physically by burying your head in a load of wet cement where you can’t breathe. You can survive for a time without breathing; but you won’t flourish as long as you are holding your breath.
“Prayer is to the Christian what breath is to life, yet no duty of the Christian is so neglected,” states R.C.Sproul. He continues:

“Prayer, like any means of growth for the Christian, requires work. In a sense, prayer is unnatural to us. Though we were created for fellowship and communion with God, the effects of the Fall have left most of us lazy and indifferent toward something as important as prayer. Rebirth quickens a new desire for communion with God, but sin resists the Spirit.”

Likewise, John Piper observed:

“Almost nothing decays so fast in the fallen human heart as the desire to pray. Nothing is more vital than prayer in Christian existence. But few things are more vulnerable to neglect…
“I urge you to resist the mindset that cynically says, ‘If God is the keeper of my soul, then I don’t need to “keep myself in the love of God”.’ But that would be like saying, since God is the giver of life, then I don’t need to breathe. No. No. Breathing is the means that God uses to sustain life. The command to breathe is the command to fall in with the purposes and patterns of God to give and sustain life.”

Likewise, the command to pray is simply the command to fall in with the purposes and patterns of God to sustain our spiritual life.

John Benton challenges the church: “The church must be a prayerful people. People who do not pray, are practical atheists – no matter what they call themselves. Churches that do not pray are secular organisations, no matter what is stated in their doctrinal basis.”

An Assisted Relationship

What does it mean: to “pray in the Spirit”?

1) To “pray in the Spirit” means to pray according to the Spirit’s leading.
Look for the Spirit to move you to pray.

I don’t mean for you to wait until you feel some sort of overwhelming spiritual sensation before you come to prayer. If you wait for that, you will probably never pray. Mostly, you just have to begin to pray.
But, as you do, you can expect the Holy Spirit will come and will assist you in prayer (Romans 8:26). He will help you in prayer as you come to prayer.
Just don’t expect Him to help you in prayer if you don’t come to prayer.

2) To “pray in the Spirit” also means to pray for what the Spirit wants you to pray for.
That means to pray according to the Word of God – that Word of God that “did not come by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21).
Or, as it is in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is Spirit-breathed by God.”

If you are to pray in the Spirit, you will pray only for what the Spirit wants you to pray for – which means praying according to the Word the Spirit authored. Especially, draw upon what you have just been reading and meditating upon in the Word of God.

That’s how you become “a man [or “woman”] of God, complete, and thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17).
That’s how you will keep yourself in the love of God.

3. LOOK… to the Lord in Hope

A Christian who is secure in the love of God is a hope-ful Christian.
Not that you will never face any difficulties in life. If you are realistic, you expect to face numerous difficulties in your life ahead.
But you believe (as it is in Romans ch 8) that “all things do work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
The one who “loves God” is a hope-ful Christian. He knows that God loves him; he is secure in that love of God.
When a person loses hope, inevitably he also loses a sense of the great love of God for him. It is very difficult to “keep yourself in the love of God” when you live without hope.

The hopeful Christian looks back

Our security comes from looking back to the cross.
Looking back, we see that: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8)

How can you look back to the cross and not believe: “God loves me. Look at what He gave up for me at the cross.” “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

That is why I should be a hope-ful Christian; a hope-filled Christian – looking back to what God has done in the past. That is why I am secure in the love of God.

The hopeful Christian looks to the present

We look for the Lord’s mercy every day.
Jeremiah looked for that mercy, facing the worst possible circumstances. Imagine facing the ISIS of that day when, like brute beasts, the enemy moves in and burns your village, rapes the women, slaughters your relatives, and carries the rest away captive – leaving you to weep among the ruins.

Yet, standing there among the desolation, Jeremiah cries out: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
Even in those horrific circumstances, Jeremiah looked to the Lord’s mercies in his day.

The hopeful Christian looks forward

The hopeful Christian is hope-filled, looking to the future. He is “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”
We look ahead, to that day when the Lord Jesus Christ will come again – and we will fully enter into “eternal life”.

Paul, like Jude, kept his eye fixed on where he was going: “Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.” (Philippians 3:20-21)
Paul suffered. Like Jeremiah he suffered mightily (and, mostly, quite unfairly) while he was on this earth. But he kept “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”
That enabled him to be hope-ful, even in the midst of his troubles. Paul was a hopeful Christian.

Build
.        Pray
.                Look

A hopeful Christian keeps himself in the love of God.

So can you.
So can I.