Hi Tom,
It's me again! I hope you don't mind me responding to you yet again. I am just so moved by your story. And I can sense your appreciation of our great desire to see you set free from uncertainty. The torment of not knowing for sure, one way or the other, is something I'm sure at least some of us here went through for a time. I remember crying out to God in near anger asking, "Why can't you just make it clear??" I was confused for a time and that was long before I found this forum. But the Lord was faithful to clear things up for me, and we know He will do this for you too.
I'm truly and peacefully confident that if I keep my spiritual eyes on Him I will come to know even as I am known, all that I need to know. No man can obtain revelation just because He wants it. All such revelation is hidden within God, and only through apokaluptsis (an opening up of the hidden things/revelation) can they/He be known.
My job is to study, seek, pray, and wait on God.
A big amen to that!
Yes, when we focus on seeking to understand who our great God is, and what the nature of His heart is, than all other things will fall into place, I believe.
It is beautifully apparent the great unconditional love you had for your son, despite his mistakes and trouble. And God showed you that your son will be safe, because in essence, it is impossible that you could love your son MORE than God loves him. He is God's son first because God created him in the womb:
Isaiah 44:24
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: "I am the LORD, who made all things...
Tom, you said of your son:
...and I didn't want to spend eternity without him near me.
Dear Tom, the heart of our Father is greater than yours or mine, His love is more pure and more powerful than anything we can express. Yet here you have spoken the heart of the Father....He surely does not want to spend eternity without ANY of His children....He will have ALL of them and not allow even one of them to go astray forever...
Luke 15:4
What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture, and go after the one which is lost, UNTIL he finds it?Is God limited by space, time or even death in fulfilling His own will and desire? Does Jesus have the keys to life and death but is unable or unwilling to use them? Is there anything that can separate you from the love of God, and throw you either into a pit of fiery hell, or into the darkness of non-existence?
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.God will not have his children, all of them whom he fashioned in the womb, to be separated from Him forever. It is not possible for His heart to live without them. Because God is Love, and Love
NEVER fails.
The love you have for your son and the grief you now feel, God feels it a hundred times more. It grieves Him to have to conform children into His image in this way, but since God is all-knowing, we know there just simply is no other way.
Lamentations 3:31-33
For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.
In fact, the methods God is using to create His family are the best way and one way or another, we WILL be a part of God's intimate family, intelligent and fully developed beings with Godly characters, just as He is.
That's the whole purpose for why we are here and why we are going through all of this! When God said, it is not good for man to be alone, He was expressing something about himself. And one child just wasn't enough for Him! He wants a family...
And he will yet fashion in all of us a heart that is like His, so that we can love Him and others with everything in us.
Jeremiah 24:7
I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.Jeremiah 31:33-34
...I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
....for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.We can believe that God can do this with everyone because nothing is too hard for him.
Jeremiah 32:17
'Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who has made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.
God loves us with a love that is bigger than we can comprehend, but you need only look into your own heart, and see a glimmer of God's love in the love you have for your son and your wife.
1 John 4:9-10
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
2 Peter 3:9,15
The Lord is not slow concerning His promise, as some count slowness, but is long-suffering toward us, not purposing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
15 ...And think of the long-suffering of our Lord as salvation Luke 6:35
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.God expects us to love our enemies because that's what he does!
The love of God burns up the dross in us, and what does fire leave behind but ashes...
Isaiah 61:1-3
The Spirit of the Lord God is on Me.... to comfort all who mourn...to give to them beauty for ashes...that He might be glorifiedPeace,
Diana