Are you willing to take the test that determines what your relationship is with Jesus. John as the author of this letter makes it very clear how you and I can know which camp we are in. Listen to what he says.

1 John 3:10 (CEV)

10 You can tell God's children from the devil's children, because those who belong to the devil refuse to do right or to love each other.

It may be that over the weeks you have quietly said to yourself that “I want to live a right life, one that is full on for Jesus and I do want to be holy in all that I say and do”. And so the question arises, "how can I do it?"

What message are you and I conveying to others. Yes, we regularly attend Church and we look like good examples.

Do our lives clearly demonstrate that we have God's Holy Spirit power within us and that in all we do there is an expectation to see God's hand at work? What about when it comes to telling the truth no matter what?

We have advocates today in all sorts of roles. We may have a financial advocate, we may have a solicitor or legal advocate or a union steward may advocate for people in the workforce. I could go on with many more.

The primary difference between these advocates and Jesus acting as our advocate before God is this.

Jesus is an advocate of a different kind; He not only speaks out for us ___ but it also cost Him personally.

For Jesus to be my ‘stand-in’ and to take my place came at a cost to Him personally.

When it says here that Jesus will be our advocate He is not just being an impersonal spokesperson but rather the Greek translation had the meaning of someone who feels for you, will come alongside you and will bring you comfort in your time of failure.

Regrettably over the last 10 to 15 or 20 years it has become progressively unpopular to talk about the blood of Jesus that poured out of His body and caused His death when He was crucified.

We need to constantly keep in mind that it was only through Jesus allowing Himself to be brutally treated and his blood lost, that our sins today, can be forgiven.

I am not one for giving my talks a title but if I were to do that today, it would probably include something about ‘abiding in Christ’ or in today’s language, “maintaining my relationship with God”. I would probably have included somewhere in the title something about ‘encouragement’.

God says, “I know”? Each letter starts the same and it is a reminder that there is nothing hidden from Almighty God. God sees our good times, God sees our bad times and God sees us when we please Him and He also sees us when we let Him down.

The interesting thing is that the Ephesian church had a pretty impressive record Christianly. Even though God turned to them and acknowledged all their attributes yet He considered these attributes cancelled out because they had lost their first love for Him and for others.

There is freedom in the furnace. Are we willing to live our lives completely submitted to God and willing to be thrown into the furnace? When we are willing to live in the furnace God will be with us before, during and afterwards. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the furnace unharmed when they put their total and absolute trust in God.