What Can and Can't Change in the Believer's Relationship With God

What Can and Cannot Change in Our Relationship with God

In a chart entitled 'Our Relationship with God,' Bryan Chapell lists what can change and what cannot change.

What Can Change

our fellowship
our experience of his blessing
our assurance of his love
his delight in our actions
his discipline
our sense of guilt

What Cannot Change

our sonship
his desire for our welfare
his actual affection for us
his love for us
our destiny
our security

--Bryan Chapell, Holiness by Grace: Delighting in the Joy That Is Our Strength (Crossway, 2001), 196 (Per Dane Ortlund).

The Gospel Alphabet: "Z" for "Zeal"

“Z”—Zeal

May God stir both our own hearts and the hearts of those who are called to serve with an authentic zeal for the Gospel, and for the Christ of the Gospel.

Indeed, Christ 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 (Titus 2:14).

The Gospel Alphabet: "Y" for "Yielding"

“Y”—Yielding

The Gospel must be continually set forth before church members because it is view of God’s mercy that we are provoked to yield our lives fully to God as living sacrifices (Rom 6:13; 12:1).

It is the kindness of God displayed in the Gospel that leads us to repentance (Rom 2:4) so that we no longer live for ourselves but for him who died for us and was raised again (2 Cor 5:15).