A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:26 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/ezk.36.26.KJV
Category: Salvation
Our purpose as Christians
Romans 12:1
I beseech you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God…
We are supposed to sacrifice our lives to God each and every day until He calls us home. While we do this in this life we are supposed to be useful to God as witnesses of His grace and mercy. God has made each of us a new creation when we have given our heart to Jesus because at that point God’s Spirit came to dwell in our heart. We are new people when we have given our hearts to Jesus. We live in His strength and by His power to be Christians. We are not the same people as we were before becoming a child of God. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit as His adopted child, with all of the gifts and treasures which come with that position.
Our holiness comes from Jesus the Christ and is not our own because we cannot be holy without His Spirit to cause us to be holy and able to do His will and learn from His Word. Without His Spirit, which seals us and equips us to be better than we were before He came into our life, we are weak and stuttering and helpless in the face of Satan’s assaults. But when we live our daily lives as a true living sacrifice to God and His Word every day, not just once a week or once every month, we have His Strength and Power and His Word to back us up in everything that we do for His Glory and not ours.
God can use our weaknesses and our insecurities to allow us to get at least one person to listen to His Story. That may be all that you are intended to do in your ministry and if that is it then you have done your part. But…should you quit at that point? I don’t think so because your life can have an impact for eternity on many more people than just one. So…don’t sell yourself short and don’t quit working at your calling which God called you into. Just because things are down a bit doesn’t mean they will stay that way.
God provides for us
Who can tell of His Love?
The love of God which is poured out on us and for us each day is hard for us to understand. He loves us even when we hate Him or reject Him. He loves us even when we try to live for Him but we fail because we try to do it in our strength and not His. God’s love for us began long ago, even before the light of the Sun was kindled into being. So, why do we choose to turn away from Him when we truly do need Him? Do we have proof of His love for us?
Yes! His love was poured out through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. God’s love for His creation is complete and deeper than we can imagine. Your so-called “race” doesn’t matter to God because we are all descended from Adam and Eve and Noah and his family. God extends His mercy and love to whoever He chooses to and there isn’t anything that we can do to influence His choices. As He said in the Bible, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion“. God’s love for us isn’t dependent upon our performance or our lack of performance because He is God!
His love is extended to all of us but it is still our choice of whether we will accept Jesus as our Savior or not. Love cannot be forced it must be given at least when we are the one’s giving our love to another or not. God’s love is not earned or given to us because of anything which we do. He loves us even if we choose to reject Jesus as our Savior and reject Him as our God. It pains His heart I am sure when we do this but that doesn’t keep Him from loving us anyway.
We have trouble seeing or even understanding how could God love us when we are sinful in our ways but He does it anyway. Everything which God has done in the past and what He will do in the future is tempered with His love for mankind. So, seek Him out as your Savior so you will have a chance to thank Him one day for His mercy and grace when you and I did not deserve it.
There is no other God!
Wherefore thou art great, O Lord God: for there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
2 Samuel 7:22 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/2sa.7.22.KJV
What do I need to do?
This is a question which many people ask when they feel the need for salvation but they have never been introduced to their Savior. Truthfully, there is not much that you need to do to obtain salvation because most of the “work” has been taken care of by Jesus Himself. When you feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit and you realize that you need to repent and change your life, your only option is to believe that the atonement has been bought for you by Jesus. Believe and repent of your sins, turn away from your “old life” and follow Jesus into a new life which will never really end!
From the point of your repentance and your acceptance of Jesus as your Savior you have a new life and a new purpose and that is to tell others about your Savior so they can meet Him and get to know Him. Life for you and anyone who accepts Jesus as their Savior will never really end, you will just transition from this life into eternity. That is the best way to describe it because death just sounds too final and for someone who is serving Jesus and has accepted Him as their Savior, the end of this life is really the beginning of your real Life! This life is just a sort of “practice” for the next one so make sure to learn everything that you can about God and His Son while you are here.
When you pass through the door which leads to eternity you won’t need to learn more about Him because at that point you will “know and be known“. Life in eternity will be different and wonderful and beyond anything on Earth that we can imagine. I cannot imagine what it will be like to be in His Presence. It will likely be a feeling and an experience which doesn’t have an equal here and the grandeur and majesty of Heaven will be so far above anything that we know until any description of it would be futile in the attempt.
God has provided a way for you and I and anyone else who feels the conviction of His Spirit to know Jesus as our Savior if we will believe in Him and the atonement which He provided and paid for on the cross. Don’t turn the chance for eternity with Him down. Please accept His Presence in your heart and in your life while there is time. Because you can only make that decision in this life, so make the right one.
God is with you
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Psalms 23:4 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.23.4.KJV
Prayer can be powerful!
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
James 5:16 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/jas.5.16.KJV
What is Easter to you?
For many of us it is a fun time to eat chocolate bunnies and hunt eggs but it really is about so much more. The real story happened not because of a spring festival or a bunch of eggs but because of our sinful nature. Jesus, the Messiah, came to die on Passover. On a Roman cross after being beaten almost to death, He died for our sins. Every person on Earth from the very beginning to the very end of history, Jesus paid for their sins and for your sins and for my sins too. The most amazing thing that He did was not dying on the cross but three days later…He came out of the grave! He conquered death so that we could have Life with Him one day if we will believe!
Are you righteous?
There are pious people and there are pretenders and even some who are “self-righteous”, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Are you righteous? If you are not born-again into the body of Christ you are not. No person on Earth has a sinless righteousness because only one Person ever achieved that and He sits at the right of God the Father. Our righteousness is as “filthy rags” and only fit to be burned in the heap of garbage outside the city. There is not one truly righteous person on Earth, not even the Pope because our righteousness is worthless unless we have salvation through Jesus and are in His righteousness.
Without the imputed righteousness of Jesus, which we have if we are saved through faith in Him, anything that we accomplish in the flesh is nothing. No matter how much good we do or how much we accomplish in this life, if it is without Jesus and done by His direction and for His Kingdom then it means nothing.
Being a part of the Christian Life takes faith in Jesus and your repentance from your sins. Not just talk or emotional feelings during a revival service. People can act like a Christian and go through the motions sometimes all the way to seminary and being the pastor of a large church and still not be a Christian. How is this possible? By doing all of the things that they have seen others do and say but not really giving their heart to Jesus and really changing their lives! If there hasn’t been a change in your soul, your heart then there really hasn’t been a change from being the person that you were.
That is what the conviction of the Holy Spirit brings to the table, so to speak. He convicts you of your need for salvation and then God places the faith in your heart to accept Jesus as your Savior so you can have a change in your heart which brings true salvation to you. There is no amount of money or education which can bring salvation into your life by learning about Jesus.
You could have a doctorate in Theology and be able to quote the Bible from the beginning to the end and if you have never accepted Jesus into your heart and repented of your sinful life, then you have the knowledge of salvation but not the fruit of it. Knowing about something or Someone doesn’t mean that you know them or even that they know you. If you aren’t known by Jesus then eternity will be a very different experience for you. Make sure of your salvation in Jesus Christ so that you can say with Paul: “Give your life as a living sacrifice to God“.
The Living Message of Christ 