February 9

Therefore, brothers, strive to make your calling and election sure. For if you practice these things you will never stumble, — 2 Pet 1:10 BSB

Do you have any evidence of your effectual calling? Has God’s grace truly taken hold of your heart? O, that you would know more fully and more powerfully the blessed hope of eternal life that is bound up in this heavenly calling, so that it might encourage you to press forward and claim all that is given to you in Christ, both now and in the future, in grace and in glory! In understanding the hope of their calling, God’s people learn that this hope encompasses all things that are theirs in Christ—whether life or death, or present or future things, for all are theirs because they are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. By securing our calling, we also secure our election, for one is the evidence of the other. If there’s doubt or uncertainty about our calling, there will be the same doubt about our election.

But as these doubts and fears are removed through the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, and we come to clearly see and believe that God’s grace has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light, we then understand by faith the glorious hope laid up in this calling. This hope becomes an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast, abounding through the power of the Holy Spirit.