NICOLE STEVENSON | Co-Host, Former Adventist Podcast
It’s not uncommon for me to listen to sermons, podcasts, or music while I work around the house. It keeps me working on my mundane tasks while using my mind for things far more satisfying than folding laundry or cleaning a kitchen. Engaging my mind in worship feels like redeeming the time while I work at the seemingly futile tasks of cleaning and organizing.
It was just another mundane day of housecleaning when I listened in on what I remember being a talk from The Shepherd’s Conference at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. I can’t remember which year the conference took place and I can’t find it online, but I’ll never forget the impact it had on me. During one of the general sessions the pastor presenting simply opened his Bible and spent an entire general session reading Psalm 119, word for word, as hundreds of men sat listening. It brought me to tears. What a beautiful and humble witness to the sufficiency of the word of God!
As I thought about what to write about this week I remembered his witness. While I may feel that I have nothing new to say, the repeated word of God never grows old! For believers, truth proclaimed stirs the heart to worship, and for unbelievers it can stir the heart to repentance and belief.
This week, I’d like to share with you a series of passages that so many of us have come to love dearly. If you are already a believer I hope these passages will cause you to rejoice in our gracious God! If they’re new to you I pray that you will come to learn that you can put your full weight on every word of the Lord as you consider what it means to trust Him and follow Him.
The verses I’ve chosen highlight the most central command in the life of a believer; the command to believe God. We will see that believing God from start to finish is the greatest work of our life. Believing God first gives us eternal life and then as we trust Him throughout our lifetime it changes us and sanctifies us for His purposes.
Lets begin with the call to believe in God for salvation. Remember that these are the words of God Himself— God who cannot lie, who does not manipulate, and who needs no interpreter.
The Call and the Promises
“For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”—John 3:16-18
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.—John 5:24
In that first verse we see that Jesus did not come the first time to condemn the world but to save it. He will, however come again for judgment, and what we do with Him now will impact how we stand before Him then.
So, what determines our condition before Him when He comes again in judgement? Not our deeds, but our belief. We are not lost or saved on the basis of what we do and don’t do, but on the basis of our belief or unbelief. Jesus said in John 5:24 that those who hear His words and believe God who sent Him already have passed from death into life eternal.
Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” —John 6:28,29
The people who asked Jesus this question wanted to know what God wanted from them. They wanted to know how to be right with Him. Jesus makes clear that justification before God isn’t something we can work toward. The work God calls us to is to believe in Jesus.
Jesus accomplished salvation completely for all who will simply believe in Him. There is no phased atonement like Seventh-day Adventism teaches. A phased atonement that denies the completed work of Christ on the cross of Calvary is a doctrine of demons.
“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” —Galatians 1:8
We have no part to play in atoning for our sins. It is only our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus that determines our standing before God. When we truly believe what He’s told us we can finally and fully confess that He is in fact the Son of God who came to take away the sins of the world.
When we turn away from our old life to trust and follow Him, submitting to Him as Lord and God, we are born of His Spirit and adopted by God. When we believe in Him we are justified before God, united to God, and credited with the righteousness of God in Christ which secures our standing before Him for all eternity (Romans 3-8). A true believer’s very nature is changed permanently upon belief. It is permanent because it’s the perfect and omnipotent monergistic work of God that does it (Eph 1:13,14; 2 Cor 5:17; John 1:12,13). Furthermore, it is God Himself who determined that He would lose none who have come to Him.
“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” —John 6:37–40
Bruce Hurt of PreceptAustin.com wrote, “The keeping power of our Lord is awesome. It is as strong as His strength and as eternal as His person.” Our security doesn’t hinge on us, it hinges on who God is. The promises of God are as certain as His character!
“Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth…”—James 1:16-18a
The Work and Obedience of Faith in God
“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God…through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.—Romans 1:1, 5, 6
Paul was the apostle to the gentiles sent by God to bring about the obedience of faith. In the book of Romans Paul details with masterful logic the reality that justification and sanctification are both accomplished apart from the law. We are justified by faith and we are led by the Spirit who sanctifies us. Paul also makes clear in his letter to the Colossians that we walk in Christ the same way that we were saved by Him— in the obedience of faith.
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.”—Colossians 2:6
So how is belief a work? It requires discipline. The world surrounds us with deceptions and temptations to doubt. The faith that endures a lifetime comes through walking with God for a lifetime.
Believing in Him means entrusting ourselves to Him fully for all of our life. It’s more than believing or trusting in one of His many acts or promises so that we can benefit from those while then questioning, doubting, or redefining other things He has said.
Believing in Him means entrusting all of our self and all of our life to all of Him on the basis of who He revealed Himself to be in Scripture. When we do, this changes how we live. Thomas Fuller wrote, “He does not believe that does not live according to his belief.”
For many of us Former Adventists, any talk of how we live can trigger the alarms and red flags for “works theology”. Please understand, when the Bible talks about our life displaying what we believe, it is not talking about lifestyle commitments that strive towards salvation the way Adventism does.
The believer lives not for salvation but from salvation. The atonement of Scripture is complete. The Biblical offer of salvation is for “Today”, not for some future time when your works will determine your destiny. So when Scripture speaks of our life as being evidence, it is not evidence used to determine our eternal outcomes later, it’s evidence that bears out what you actually believe now.
Imagine if you will that you have a daughter who is standing on one side of a chasm and you stand on the other. Between you stretches a very long bridge. Now, imagine that she’s injured and you desperately need to get to her. If you believe that the bridge between you can hold your weight you will run to her without thought! If, however, you don’t believe it can hold you, or if you are doubtful, you may frantically look for another way. What you believe about that bridge will determine how you approach your daughter and perhaps even the outcome once you reach her.
What we believe impacts how we approach all of life. The more we are willing to put our weight on the Word of God, the more our life will begin to look different even as we face profound uncertainty. As believers our ongoing obedience to God is our ongoing faith in Him as we shape our life around what He has told us. Our trust in Him grows as we behold Him as He is in His word, and as we behold Him as He is, we are changed from one degree of glory to the next by His Spirit at work in us (2 Cor 3:18).
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”—1 Thessalonians 5:23,24
The Battle For Belief
It makes sense that if the obedience of faith is the most important work of our lifetime, then there would be many false religions, cults, and distractions that surround us seeking to instill doubt or draw us away. Paul worked hard in his ministry to remind his churches to hold fast to the message they heard from him. He and other New Testament writers went to great lengths to warn the churches against those who would come in and teach false or new teachings that were not from God.
It was to the Apostles that Jesus gave the work of teaching the world all He had commanded them (Matt 28:18-20; John 17:18-20). By His Spirit God breathed out the Scriptures, and in the New Testament we receive by the hands of His Apostles the very teachings of the Son of God. This is why Scripture is both inerrant and sufficient for salvation and the transformation of lives—it is from God.
So when we see the New Testament letters that persistently call believers to hold fast to the gospel given by the apostles, we can know this is important to God. In the letters to the churches we see time and again the charge to hold fast to the gospel that saves. We see apostles charging men to entrust the teaching of the gospel only to leaders who handle it with careful commitment to its original meaning. We also see the call to protect the churches from any variations or from factions that go beyond what is written.
In Paul’s definitive chapter on what the gospel is, he makes clear that it is the good news that is saving God’s people— if in fact they truly believe it:
“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”—1 Corinthians 15:1-5
Paul went to great lengths in the letter to the Galatians to rescue them from twisted interpretations of the gospel which distorted it. His command to them was not to work harder but to “stand firm” in what they already knew. Belief in the face of deception takes intentional work!
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”—Galatians 5:1
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul taught about the spiritual battles that rage around us in this present age. In his teaching on how to respond to this spiritual battle, he told the Ephesians to put on the armor of God and to stand.
The armor of God is armor from God. The items Paul wrote about represent the salvation God gave, the faith He gave, the truth He gave, the righteousness He gave, the readiness to share the gospel which comes from the Spirit He gave, and the Word of God that He gave. As we believe in all that He has already given us our only work is to stand firm in those truths, to pray, and to share the gospel (Ephesians 6:10-18).
Belief Brings Assurance
“And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.—1 John 5:11-13
It wasn’t too many years after being saved that the Lord walked me into one of the hardest seasons of my life to date. During that time I struggled with doubt that I was really saved. I believed in God with all my heart, but my heart was deceiving me with fears that God had forsaken me and didn’t want me.
One evening as I sat with a mentor I shared my doubt. She looked at me with a look of puzzlement and asked me, “Do you believe that Jesus is God and that He came to atone for sin for all who believe?” I assured her that I absolutely did. Her response was simple, “Then you’re saved, Nikki. Salvation is by faith, and if you believe and trust the Lord than you can know today that you are saved.”
It was then I realized that I had been looking to my circumstances to try to understand if I was wanted by God. What I needed to be doing was looking to the Word of God and reminding myself of the circumstances Jesus submitted to so that He could reconcile me to Himself! What further evidence could I possibly need to know that I had not been forsaken?
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can beagainst us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”—Romans 8:31-39
Belief Brings Rest and Transformation
Believing God’s authoritative word brings assurance no matter our circumstances. When we learn to believe the Word of God, when we abide in it and trust it, we are set free and sanctified by it (John 8:31,32; John 17:17). The more I trust the words of Scripture, the more I find rest in God and the more the words seem to direct my life. I don’t really have a better way to explain that, but it reminds me of Hebrews 4:10-13:
“For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”—Hebrews 4:10–13
Chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews are supremely important for former Seventh-day Adventists to get right because they were used in Adventism to support false doctrines. The portion I shared above comes after the author explained that obedience means believing the good news of the gospel. In 4:3 he makes clear that when we believe we enter God’s rest.
To summarize my understanding of these two chapters, the command here is for readers to respond to the gospel with faith. Over and again the author implores his readers to refuse to harden their hearts like rebellious Israel did when good new came to them from God and they refused to believe. He pleads with them that as long as it is called “Today”, if they hear God’s voice, they are to respond to Him with the obedience of faith.
Following this call to strive to enter God’s rest through faith, he gives a beautiful description of the living word of God which goes to work within believers to teach and transform. This process occurs over a lifetime, and it’s through this process and through walking with God in all of life’s circumstances that we come to know and love Him and His word with greater depth.
Believe and Hold Fast
If you haven’t trusted in the Lord Jesus for your salvation then I pray that you will begin to see that He is not calling you to a heavy burden. Jesus is calling you to find your rest in Him through trust in Him.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”—Matthew 11:28-30
If you have trusted Jesus, then it’s my prayer that you will grow in your love for Him and that you will remain steadfast in your faith while abiding in Him and entrusting all of your life to all of Him. Remember to saturate your life in the Word of God and to hold fast to the pure gospel as taught by the Lord Jesus and His Apostles in the pages of God’s Holy and unerring Word.
I pray for us all that the witness of that faithful pastor at the Shepherd’s Conference who read Psalm 119 will remain a beautiful reminder that the Word of God is sufficient, it is necessary, and it is our supreme authority in all of life. May it be all that and more for you as you walk out your life with God in the obedience of faith.
“And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.”—1 John 5:20
“Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all.”—2 Thessalonians 3:16
- God’s Word Really Is Sufficient - April 24, 2025
- Ponderings From the Former Adventist Conference - February 20, 2025
- Repeating What We Know - December 26, 2024