The overflowing blessings God has lavished on His people in Christ provide for every need we could imagine. One of those needs is for absolute assurance we are safe and secure in our Father’s great love. God has made His adopted children secure, and given this assurance, by sealing us with His indwelling Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14). And this, beloved, is the fountain of great hope, comfort, and courage in our daily walk – regardless of the circumstances we face along the way. As Paul confidently declared elsewhere: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31)
19th century pastor Octavius Winslow provides these helpful insights regarding the sealing of the Holy Spirit:
“It is that act of the Holy Spirit, by which the work of grace is deepened in the heart of the believer, so that he has an increasing and abiding conviction of his acceptance in Jesus, and his adoption into the family of God. It is a clearer and more undoubted manifestation of Christ to the soul-a larger degree of the sanctifying, witnessing, and anointing influences of the Holy Spirit-evidencing itself in a growing holiness of character. Let us not be misunderstood. We speak not of some peculiar and sudden impulse on the mind-of some immediate suggestion or revelation to the soul-some vision of the night, or voice in the air. No; we speak of a growth in the knowledge of Christ-in sanctification of heart-in holiness of life-in an increasing and abiding moral certainty of the believer’s ‘calling and election.’” (http://www.apibs.info/devotions/owet/owet04.htm#13)
I encourage you for the next 7 days to take a few minutes when you wake in the morning, and before you fall asleep at night, to meditate and pray over these great truths. May God help all of us to think and walk in a manner worthy of all He’s given us in Christ!
Praying for you with the affection of Christ,
Greg