In John 15:5(NLT), Jesus Christ tells us that He is the vine and we are the branches. We are his body, and he is our head. Everything that we are and everything that we do exists only because we are a part of him. He teaches us in this verse, “For apart from me you can do nothing.” It’s apparent from his teaching here that it is indeed possible to be apart from Jesus Christ. We can separate ourselves from him, and that’s not a good thing to do. Apart from him, we are spinning our wheels but not moving or going anywhere. For many people, that is exactly how life feels. They feel stuck. Jesus Christ said of himself in John 14:6 that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one can get to the Father unless they come through him. He is life itself, so it stands to reason that if we are separated from him, the source of life, we will feel like empty shells. This isn’t what God wants for us.
Ephesians 1:3(NLT) tells us, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” This verse gives us all the information we need regarding the bountiful treasures that God gives us when we remain in Christ. Remaining in Christ is what God wants for every person because all blessings are contained within in His Son. Psalm 84:11 informs us that God is our sun and shield, and He doesn’t withhold any good thing from those who walk upright before Him. Through Jesus Christ, God lavishes His goodness on His kids. There’s not one blessing that Heavenly Father hasn’t given you and me through Christ. He tells us in Ephesians 1:3 that He’s blessed us with every spiritual blessing, and it is all because of what He’s done for us through His only begotten Son.
Jesus Christ teaches us in John 4:24 that God is Spirit, and we must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. From this truth in the Gospel of John, we know our origin. Our Heavenly Father is Spirit, and we are His Spiritual children. Our bodies are made from dust, and when our spirit and soul leave them, our bodies will return to that from which they were made. They will return to dust. Our bodies are the masterful shell that God designed them to be, but they are temporary structures. Our human spirit and human soul are a different story.
John 3:16 declares that God loved the world so much that He gave us all His only begotten Son, and whoever believes in the ministry, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus Christ will receive eternal life! Becoming born-again is a spiritual birth, which means that it is more real than a physical birth. Our physical bodies will die one day, but our spirits will live eternally in Christ when we accept him into our hearts through faith. We become new creations in him, because our human spirit is recreated and made brand new. It becomes infused with the life of Christ, and we then connect to God through Jesus Christ. It’s His Spirit to our human spirit communion and communication. Our faith in God through what He did on the cross through Jesus Christ makes us alive and keeps us connected to Him.
It is clear why our faith in God is so important. It is required to be born again spiritually. It demonstrates our belief in Him, and it also reflects our gratitude for what He’s done for us through His Son. 1Peter 1:5 says that we are kept by the power of God through our faith in Him.
Through Christ, God has shown us His nature. We see the very heart of God revealed in Christ when he walked the earth in human form. It is indisputable that God has a nature, Christ has a nature, and the Holy Spirit has a nature. The nature of the Godhead is such that He is AND always loves what is good, righteous, and true. The nature of life follows the nature of God. Therefore, life will always and forever move forward and upward. It seeks to expand and increase through its Source. That Source is God, and God is love.
God is never about regression and always about progression. No one can go back to the past. The past is gone and will never ever come again. We will never be able to go back to years gone by and bring past experiences forward. They are no more, and in order to move forward, we must release our hold on the past entirely. We are no longer who we used to be, and we must bring our minds and hearts in the present with God and focus on what He is doing right now, this very moment, in our lives. This is faith in action! Jesus Christ will take us higher and there’s no question whatsoever about our ability to soar because God has blessed us with every blessing because of our union with Christ.
God’s desire is that we get better and better as we walk with Him and learn more about His Son. He’s told us that He’s blessed us with ALL spiritual blessings, so we’ll keep our eyes looking forward and not backward. He wants us to come out of darkness as we learn more about Christ and bask in the moment with Him. He is in us, working to will and do of His good pleasure, and we need to let Him have His way. The Apostle Paul put it best when he said in Philippians 3:13-14(NLT), “No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
You may not feel as though you have been blessed with all spiritual blessings, but as a born-again believer, you do, because there is no time in which you are alone or without God. He is with you every moment of everyday, and Romans 8:39 affirms that nothing can separate us from His love. Your feelings don’t have authority, God’s Word does. Pray that God will help you to walk by faith so that you are not leaning on anything other than the truth of His Word.
Jesus Christ also teaches in John 3:36(NLT), “And anyone who believes in God’s Son has eternal life. Anyone who doesn’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life but remains under God’s angry judgment.” God’s judgment is against sin because sin is darkness, defeat, and death. It does not come from Him. He is life! Through Jesus Christ, God invites us to come to the table and feast on His goodness, but this is our choice. We can abide in Christ and enjoy all our spiritual blessings, or we can deny our Christ identity and remain in the dark. God wants us to choose Him, and in so doing, we will choose to remain eternally in His love.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Blessed with All Spiritual Blessings”, written for 4theChristianMan.com© 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.