"Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

If you’re a believer, you’ve got power. Jesus blesses believers with grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit. But we’re not to rejoice in power, gifts or success, we’re to rejoice in our salvation. Rejoice that God wrote your name in the Lamb’s book of life when he chose you in Christ in eternity past.

God inscribed our names in his registry before the foundation of the world, before creating the heavens, before flinging the galaxies across the sky. He chose us in the misty eons of eternity past, long before angels existed. God chose us before we were born, or had done anything good or bad.

Incredibly, God wrote our names in heaven knowing we’d rebel and reject him, and nail his Son to the cross. He also elected us fully aware that even after he saved us we would still sin.

God didn’t set his love on us because of anything worthy or desirable in us. For we were only wicked and rebellious. We were all running as hard as we could, hell-bent toward destruction when God said, “I’ll save that one, and that one, and this one too.”

One of my favorite verses is Jeremiah 31:3: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” For some reason found only in God he has loved us from all eternity.