No it’s not. I was trying to get her to tighten up her response. You would have needed to follow our conversation.
If you tell a person, even a person who has received a down payment of the Spirit, that they must now work really hard to overcome their flesh because if they don’t they’ll be thrown into the lake of fire, you have created a number of problems for the person rather than helping them. First, no one who has received His Spirit will ever be thrown into the lake of fire. That’s a fact. They believed and were born again by the Spirit, (if they received the Spirit) and they will never die. That’s settled. Secondly, you have set the person up for possibly years and years of futility as a foolish galatian, trying to finish in the flesh what began by the Spirit. Men do not overcome their flesh by trying really hard. From start to finish it is by the Spirit and by trusting God.
So, I was trying to get her to tighten up her response because the op needed building up of her trust that Jesus spoke true when He said He wouldn’t abandon us. She needed to hear some promises that would build up her trust (edify her) not be told to try harder.
"born again by the Spirit" - Do we know who truly are born of the Spirit from the outside?
This was the question that even the apostles wondered at.
1. Gentiles anointed with the gifts of the Spirit just as they had been a Pentecost.
2. The dilemma of someone who has tasted the Holy Spirit and then turns away.
3. The phrases about continuing in the faith until the end, proving true our calling
4. Brotherly love making sure our calling
5. Sowing to the Spirit to reap life and to the flesh to reap death.
6. Brothers who stood beside Paul, yet returned to the world
7. Widows who confessed faith yet were led away by desires of the flesh, satan.
8. Revelations, the churches called to be overcomers of the challenges before them or fall
Peter describes things like this
We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands
1 John 2:3
Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,
who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession--to the praise of his glory.
Eph 1:13-14
The Lord is encouraging us with signs of our reality in Christ, but until that day, only then will everything be revealed.
Judas behaved like all the other apostles yet turned out to be a traitor and not Jesus's friend.
In the eternal we are settled, but in the present we cannot assume anything. In a marriage you give tokens of love and bonding
each day with concern, hugs, kisses, empathy, getting alongside another. You assume the future is set, yet it is only set if the
relationship continues alive and loving.
A side note today, I wondered why I did not like putting things away after a job has been finished.
It struck me, I did not like taking away the joy of the importance of fixing stuff, its show in the tools, and letting go of the
experience and making things go back to normal. We all come to blocks in our relationships, but working through them keeps
them alive. Working through them also proves that the relationship matters deeply above other things, and that matters.
God bless you