You can go to church and be baptized and read God’s Word but if you don’t believe in Jesus for your salvation and repent of your old way of living…none of that will do you any good when it comes to getting into Heaven. You may be a member of a church for many years and you might know some Scripture by heart but if you don’t know Him and, more importantly, you are not sure that He knows you then your eternity will be very different from what you think it will be.
It isn’t a hard choice when you know you need Him as your Savior but some people seem to think that they can or need to help Him to save their souls. There is nothing that you or I can do that Jesus hasn’t already done to pay the price for our salvation. He did it all. We only need to accept it when it is offered to us.
Going to church, reading God’s Word, prayer…all of these are good things to do but they won’t bring you salvation. That is only found in Jesus Christ and your sincere belief in Him for your salvation. Then…you need to read the Bible and become a true follower of Him for the rest of your life. Even the Bible says “do not forsake the assembling of yourselves“, the reason for this is you can be encouraged by other believers and you can pray together about things that are happening in your life and theirs. It doesn’t matter who said what to you years ago. You are an adopted child of God when you give your life to Jesus, don’t worry about old pains and slights that happened long ago.
Allow God to take care of those problems, you server Him from this point on.
This is the question that I asked myself for many years before giving my heart to Jesus. What does He require from me to be a Christian? The answer is two-fold: one, He wants us to obey Him, and in regard to the second question, He doesn’t require anything more than your belief in Jesus as your Savior. There is nothing that you can do that will help you be a Christian.
Jesus did all of the work that needed doing, all you need to do is believe in Him for your salvation. That is it. There are no rules to follow or prescribed actions that need to be done because you and I can’t help Jesus save our souls. It is your faith in Him and your belief in His atonement for you that saves your soul from hell, with nothing required from you other than submitting your life and your heart to Him.
In my opinion, that is what keeps many people from believing in Him for their salvation. It’s too simple! Just believe in Him and be saved. That is what the gospel teaches. As Jesus told Nicodemus, “As the people believed and looked on the serpent on the pole to be cured, so they will only need to believe on the Son of Man”. Today, we want to have a part in our salvation but the only part that we have in it is to respond to the Holy Spirit when we are convicted of our need for salvation. Many people seem to push it away and decide that they aren’t ready yet. They think they will have plenty of time to do this later which is a lie from Satan.
Not one of us knows if we will even wake up in the morning so the thought that you have “plenty of time for that” is very deceptive. Although, people listen to that idea all of the time. When the day comes, and I believe it won’t be long in coming, the church and the believers who have died in Christ will be taken up to meet the Lord in the air. After that happens, there are going to be many who will regret waiting. Don’t put your salvation on hold, listen to that voice that is telling you that you need Jesus in your life.
What do you have faith in today? Is it in your financial situation or maybe your job? Do you have faith that your family will be okay and that your home is secure from thieves? Do you have faith in anything?
The world around us asks us to trust or have faith in it and in all of the “promises” made by politicians who run our government but why should we? They make promises and then break them before they sit down in the office they were put in. In the past couple of years, the entire world has seen the “truth”, if you can call it that, of how politicians run their mouths and tell us many things that can’t be verified yet they want us to “trust” that they have our best interest in mind.
Most of those in office have been there long enough that they are wealthy to the point of being above the laws that they pass for the rest of us. They don’t actually represent us anymore because they don’t know what it feels like to be unable to pay for your groceries and your electric bill too. Many people, myself included, have to choose which bill we can pay or even whether we can afford to buy our groceries. Our “representatives” in Congress don’t know how that feels and likely don’t remember it even if they did.
One thing that Christians should remember during this trying time that we are going through is that God looks at your heart and He doesn’t care about the amount you give to Him but how you give it. He knows your heart and He can see if you are giving out of duty or if you are giving to Him cheerfully because you are grateful for what you have been given. We should place our faith in Him and His provision for us and not in the world around us. I am not speaking of giving money, although that may be part of your offering to Him, but also your time and your prayer life and in studying His Word. This is part of your giving to God that which you are grateful for.
When we give our lives daily to Him, He honors us with blessings that we may not see immediately but they come to us in ways that we will understand later. Seek Him and serve Him every day, not just on Sunday or Wednesday or even on the original Sabbath of Saturday. He gives us the air that we breathe and the food for our tables and the ability for us to serve Him in ways that we don’t understand yet. God does this not because it is required but because He loves us and we should reflect that love back to Him in our everyday lives.
I’ve had to wear glasses for most of my life and there are days when it is a burden to wear them. There are also days when I barely notice I have them on. These days, with all that is going on in the world around me, it is hard to see the Light of God’s love for us. I mean, look at the people in Ukraine that are going through the war and the death of their loved ones. Their country is being torn apart by another madman who wants their country. His army is blowing up buildings and churches and roads and bridges. Killing people with no thought of their lives or what they might’ve contributed to society. Why? Just because one person in one country wants this country to be brought back into their country?
Then you have other “wars” that are being waged or threatened simply because of their differences in religion and beliefs. In other places, there are people who are being killed because they were in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Not because they were a part of a gang but because they happened to be on the wrong street when things go out of control. It is happening in more than one city all over America and very likely in other countries too. All of these things were foretold long ago as “birth pains before the time”. That time is almost upon us.
You can choose to believe it or not but you can’t run from it. We are living in the end times. In the few years left before the Tribulation. What can you do? Pray and seek God as your Savior because when the day comes when the church is taken up, the whole world will know and those who are still here will have to endure for Jesus until the end. If you don’t choose to believe in Jesus as your Savior, then you will spend eternity in hell. There are no gray areas. You either believe in Him for your salvation or you don’t. Once you have taken your last breath here, you will be judged for your life here. If you gave your life to Jesus then there are no worries. If you didn’t then your eternity is sealed in hell.
There are so many today who are denying that Jesus is the Savior or that Christian ideas are even true. You can debate this point all you want, but when you are standing in front of God what will you say to Him? God knows your heart so you can’t bluff your way into Heaven. He knows exactly who belongs and those who do not. Because Jesus either knows you or He doesn’t. You can know about Him all that you want. You may even have a seminary degree and have led a church for a while but if He doesn’t know you then you are just as lost as anyone else in the world. Make sure today before your time comes up.
Being a teacher and a preacher of God’s Word is needed today but only if you are called to be one. God qualifies the called according to His Word. Teaching God’s Word and the mystery of salvation to those who are seeking Him is a calling and one that should be taken seriously. Especially today with so many different ideas and doctrines being brought into the church. Being a Christian is hard enough without adding confusion and “man-made” ideas into the mix.
The time that we are living in now is near the end of the “church age” and people need clear leadership in the church. Preaching from God’s Word and teaching the doctrine that Jesus taught to His disciples is the way to go. Man-made wisdom and ideas need to be thrown out of the church and strict adherence to God’s Word should be the rule rather than the exception.
Think of God and His qualities and His abilities. Can you truly do that? I have read through God’s Word so many times over the past decade, yet I can’t comprehend His glory and His majesty from His Word. Comprehending Him is so far above my finite mind because He is so far above us until it is incomprehensible for me or anyone else. Why? Simply put…a drop of water cannot comprehend the vast oceans yet both are made of (mostly) the same element. God is, God was and God always will be God. His Spirit resides in us when we accept Him as our Savior. How? Because He says so.
We cannot know “how” God does the things that He does but by His power and His might the world and the entire cosmos are held together. There are many people who do not want to believe this but since God’s Word says it, I believe it. Belief only saves us when we place that belief in Jesus Christ and since He is our Savior, that settles it for me. I pray that everyone who reads this will turn to Him for their salvation before the day comes when the church is taken away. Will it be possible to be saved through faith after that? Yes, but it will be harder to do. The Holy Spirit will leave with the church but God can save as many as will believe even during the Tribulation to come.
John 3:16-17 says it best: 16For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.…
And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish. And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Isaiah 2:17-19 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/isa.2.17-19.KJV
When this happens, the world will know that the Bible was the Truth and that God’s promises were real. They won’t like it but they won’t be able to do anything about it. Keep your eyes on Jesus and your heart in His hands because one day soon, the whole world will know that what we’ve been telling them is the Truth.
The Living Message of Christ 