I may need to change the name of this blog...

to "Five Pointer." I've really been thinking about that point called "Irresistible Grace", and whether or not we can resist when He calls us to come up out of the muck and mire of our sin. We can't. In order to be saved, in order to overcome our own fleshly desire to live our own life and not serve GOD, we need to be pulled, because we will not seek GOD on our own. Romans 3:11--"There is none that understands, there is none that seeks after GOD." We don't seek after GOD, He seeks after us. 1st Corinthians 12:3--"no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." No one can confess that Jesus Christ is Lord unless they are directed by the Holy Spirit. Why that took so long to sink in, I do not know. Philippians 1:6--"being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." HE began the good work, and HE will finish it. Then, of course, there is Romans 9:15-16, 18-23--

"I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy...Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory..."

Also, listen to Ephesians 2:10--"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." He has prepared us from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) that we should do the good works we were appointed to do.

There were also many things that Jesus said that speak to the fact that we cannot call upon the Lord lest He shows us. John 17:12--"While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition..." He said in several places, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." In other words, if GOD has opened your ears to hear the truth, then listen. In John 6:44, Jesus says, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him..."

This blog will still be called "Four Pointer", but with the disclaimer, "But I'm a five-pointer now." For a really good, easy-to-follow read on the "Five Points", go to John Piper's website here.