Forever Home in the Eternal Family of God

Encouragement for the Family of God by Kenton Cheek

1 November 2025

Reading From Titus 2

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.”

—Titus 2:11-15

     “For God so loved the world” is how John 3:16 begins.  The love of God extends to all mankind regardless of the choices individuals make or even if they reject His greatest gift of salvation.  Sinful decisions grieve the heart of God, but perhaps resistance to His love and rejection of His grace and mercy grieves Him the most.  Love is not the same as acceptance or affirmation.  The only way to have right standing with the Father is to accept the substitutionary atonement of the Son.  God is perfectly loving but He is also perfectly just and will not accept or affirm our prideful sin.  We are all loved by Him, but we must choose to believe, repent, confess and accept His lordship in order to be adopted into His eternal family.

     His gracious and merciful salvation does not give us a blank check to do whatever we want.  Rather, His loving pardon inspires us to live holy lives.  This means rejecting what our flesh wants to do and instead embracing the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the decisions we make.  Sin comes naturally to us.  When we are born again, our spirits fuse with the Holy Spirit and we become a new creation in Christ Jesus.  Love and holiness comes supernaturally to us, but we must continually reject what the natural man (the flesh) wants.  He must increase within us and our sinful desires must decrease.

     Faith, hope and love inspire us to do good works.  As we yield to the Holy Spirit in us, He works through us to accomplish the will of the Father upon the Earth.  When Christians live like Jesus wants them to, the world around them become a brighter, more love place.  He wants Heaven to come to Earth and we do that by living in loving obedience to the precepts and principles of the Bible. 

“Heavenly Father, thank You for the greatest spiritual gift of all, salvation in Jesus Christ.  I pray that we would reject all that is not of You, fix our eyes upon You, and run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Bless us with Your love, joy and peace as we labor in Your vineyard.  In the strong and loving Name of Jesus Christ I pray these things, Amen.”

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

—Ephesians 4:11-13