What Do I Have To Do To Be Saved?

John 3:3 says, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

To be saved you must turn away from sin, believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and receive Him by confessing Him as Lord and Savior of your life.

Here is the step-by-step process. First, you must consider your life and then turn away from everything in it that is contrary to what God wants. This turning away from selfishness and toward God is called repentance, (Mathew 3:7; Acts 3:19).

Second, you must acknowledge, and believe that Jesus Christ died on the Cross to forgive you of sin. You take Him as your Savior to cleanse you from sin- as the substitute who paid the price due for your sin, (Romans 5:9-10; Titus 2:14).

Believing means to trust in, have faith in, and to be fully convinced of, fully relying on what you are acknowledging. It expresses reliance upon and a personal trust that produces obedience.

Third, you must ask Him to be Lord of your life, acknowledging openly and verbally that Jesus is not only your Savior, but your Lord, (1 John 2:23).

The Bible says that as many as received Him were given the power to become the sons of God, (John 1:12). So when you open your heart and receive Him, He comes into your heart- your inner person- through His Holy Spirit, and begins to live His life in you. From that point on, it is your privilege and call to confess what God has done, (Romans 10:9).

The power is now established at the beginning of every Christian's life in Christ, through this process. His continuing working in our lives is advanced by the same means through faith, the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things unseen.

..

Our Position In Christ

The Book of Ephesians speaks of three topics:

Our position in Christ ( Ephesians 1:1 - 3:21) - Sit

Our life in the world ( Ephesians 4:1 - 6:9) - Walk

Our attitude to the enemy ( Ephesians 6:10 - 24) - Stand

.....In our position in Christ, we note the word "Sit", which is the key and secret of the beginning of our spiritual life. The second part of Ephesians speaks of our "Walk", and the third section speaks of us "Standing". To be a useful instrument in God's Hand, a man must be balanced in his Position, his Life, and his Warfare.

.....Christianity does not begin with walking, it begins with sitting. Most Christians make the mistake of trying to walk in order to be able to sit, but that is the opposite of the true order God designed for us. In our own intellect, we reason that if we do not walk this out first, how will we ever reach our goal? Or, what can we attain without effort? But again, God's ways are always opposite man's ways. If we try to do anything in our own strength and thinking, we get nothing. If we seek to attain something, we will miss everything. Christianity does not start with the word "Do", it starts with the word "Done". That is why it is called a Finished Work. To "Walk" implies effort, where as God says in Ephesians 2: 8-9, that we are saved, not by works, but by grace through faith. So we need to really see that we began our Christian life by depending not upon our own doing, but on what He, Christ, has done. Ephesians 2: 5-6 says, "We were made alive, raised with, and seated with Christ together in the heavens." We must "Rest" in the Finished Work of the Cross.

.....Sitting is an attitude of "Rest", and we can only advance in our Christian Life as we learn first of all, to "Sit" down. So what does it mean to "Sit" down? When we walk or stand, we bear on our legs all the weight of our own body, but when we sit down, our entire weight rests upon what we are sitting on. Walking and standing use and require a lot more energy, but when we are seated, we can relax, because there is no longer a strain on us. So in a spiritual realm, to "Sit" down is to simply "Rest", ourselves, our future, our everything upon the Lord. We are to let Him bear the responsibility and cease to carry it ourselves. God shows this over and over again throughout Scripture.

Example 1. In creation, God worked six days and then He rested. On the seventh day, after He completed His work, and the task was over, He ceased to work. The seventh day became the Sabbath of God. But what of Adam? Where did he stand in relation to the "Rest" of God? He was created on the sixth day, and had no part in those first six days of work. God's seventh day was in fact Adam's first. Adam began his life with the Sabbath, from the position of "Rest". You see, God works before He rests, while man must enter into God's "Rest" before he can work or do the Will of God.

Example 2. In Mark 6: 30-44, Jesus feeding the 5ooo. (Verse 39) - Jesus commanded the Disciples to get in groups of proper order and "Sit" down before they could receive what He had for them to feed on.

Example 3. In Exodus, before they left Egypt, they had to "Sit" and partake of the lamb which was going to enable them to "Walk" out and sustain them through the wilderness, to finally "Stand" in their inheritance or victory that God had for them, which was the Promise Land.

Example 4. In Luke 10: 38-42, The story of Martha and Mary. Martha was distracted with much serving, while Mary "Sat" at Jesus' feet. All of Martha's "Walking" without first "Sitting" left her worried and troubled, while Mary made the right decision, which could not be taken away from her, to receive the Word of Jesus.

.....The bottom line of all this is that if we spend time "Seated" with Him, we will see our true position in Him. How long do we have to "Sit" there? As long as it takes.

.....God has done everything in Christ, and we need to see ourselves "Seated" in Christ. In Luke 14: 17, there is an invitation to the Great Banquet, "Come, for all things are now ready." Our life begins with the discovery of what God has provided. Every spiritual experience begins with an acceptance by faith, of what God has done. His experience has now become my spiritual history. God can speak of you and me as already having everything "With Him". All we now have, we have in Christ.
.

OUR GLORIOUS BODY!

.....Our natural body was dead spiritually. Sown in it was corruption, dishonor, and weakness. We were made of dust, and under it a force of sin, in which the result or penalty was death. No life was able to be produced from this seed planted within us, through the separation between us and God. The seed of death produced death, that of its own kind. But through the perfect death, The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, we have another seed planted within us, today. A seed containing Incorruption, Glory, and Power. A spiritual seed, producing a spiritual body from a Life-giving Spirit. The nature of this seed is to bear the image of the heavenly man, Christ in us. This is not task, although we labor in the Word of God, tending to the seed, watering, weeding, pruning it as it produces a life that it was designed to do. Seeing that in the Seed's Death, Christ Life is produced and the harvest of the fruit is inevitable for which the seed was designed, producing good fruit. Opening up our minds by Faith to see who we really are and what we are, maturing, and growing up to be. The whole process starts from the inside out. First the spirit, then the soul, and then the body, each part giving itself up to a death process to produce the Resurrection Life of which the seed was designed to do. Forming the Body of Christ. Eventually the corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality, resulting in the destruction of physical death itself. A true picture and manifestation of the Transfiguration. Seeing ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ through a Revelation of the Finished Work of the Cross.

.

WHY DID JESUS WEEP?

.....The passage of scripture in John 11: 1-44, is the story about Lazarus being raised from the dead. It also contains the shortest verse in the whole Bible, John 11: 35, "Jesus wept." May I share with you today a little bit of Revelation received from God through my personal studies about why Jesus wept.

.....One of Jesus' best friends, Lazarus, was sick. Mary and Martha sent someone to go and find Jesus. Yet when Jesus heard the news, He remained where he was for two extra days before coming. He told his disciples, (John 11: 4) "This sickness is not unto death, but for the Glory of God, that the Son of God maybe Glorified through it." The story was an example of God's Divine Sovereignty in the midst of human suffering demonstrating His Purpose and Grace through His Son Jesus. Jesus explained in John 11: 9 - 10 that His orders came from His Father and His relationship with His Father determined His actions. He went on to explain to the disciples in John 11: 11, that Lazarus, His friend, was only asleep and He would go and wake him. Lazarus represents the Church today, not dead but asleep, needing a Revelation of Jesus to awaken them today. Jesus finally arrived in Bethany and Lazarus had now been inthe tomb for 4 days. At this point, Martha and Mary both confronted Him when He showed up and each said, "Lord, if You had only been here, my brother would not have died. Jesus told them that their brother would rise again, but they did not understand what He meant by this. So He tried to explain to them further in John 11: 25 - 26, saying, "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me, shall never die." Then He asked Martha if she believed this, and she said in John 11: 27, "Yes, Lord, I believe You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world. Jesus then groaned in the Spirit and was troubled when He saw Mary and the Jews that were with her crying. He asked them where they had laid him. And then He wept.

.....My question today is why did Jesus weep and who did He weep for?

.....He could not have been weeping for Lazarus, for three reasons:

.....1. Lazarus was asleep.

.....2. This sickness was not unto death, but for the Glory of God, so that the Son of God maybe Glorified through it.

.....3. Whoever believes in Me shall never die, he shall live.

.....You see at this point it struck me why He wept, and who He wept for. Jesus was weeping for Mary, Martha, and all the Jews (the people), not for Lazarus. Follow me back in time for moment.

.....In 2 Peter 3: 8 its says, "One day with the Lord is as 1000 years, and 1000 years is as one day." From the time of Adam and Eve in the Garden and their fall, to the fulfillment of all the Prophecies of the Messiah coming was 4000 years. Hence, the reason Jesus waited 4 days to go and see Lazarus. Lazarus in a way represented all of Mankind, God's creation that was in a fallen state, sick, dying under the curse, and separated from God, because of the force of Sin being released upon the Earth.

.....So here was the Messiah, the Christ, who came into this world to make things right again, and reconcile man back to God, fulfilling the Law, standing there before them and yet they still doubted and could not believe. This is truly why He wept. Jesus had been with Mary, Martha, the Disciples, and the Jews at this point for a few years, doing many miracles before them and shared many things with them and yet they still could not understand. You see, in the presence of the Messiah the Law is fulfilled, the curse is reversed, and death had no power or right to hold Lazarus in the tomb. Jesus was trying to show them it was only temporal and not eternal upon the completion of the Finished Work of the Cross.

.....In John 11: 38 Jesus went to the tomb and a stone was laying against it. The stone represented an obstacle, the bondage, those things that stand in our way to believing in the Word of God. Jesus told them to remove the stone. Yet they questioned Jesus saying, "Lord, by this time there is a stench, for Lazarus has been dead for 4 days." Jesus then asked them about their Faith in John 11: 40 when He said, "Did I not say to you that if you believe you would see Glory of God? (Life in Christ- F.R.E.E.D.O.M.-Fully Renouncing Every Evil Dominion Over Man.) They then removed the stone. Jesus then lifted up His eyes and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing here before Me, I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me." Jesus then cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth!" Showing that the Messiah, and the Word of God spoken, brings forth Life. Lazarus then came out, bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. (Walking toward the Light, The Truth, Taking little steps.) Jesus said to those around him, "Loose him, and let him go." Signifying that those around him, now believers from seeing the Miracle, had a part in helping to set the captives free. This is the responsibility of the Church today. The Body of Christ.
.......................Whom the Son Sets Free, is Free Indeed!

.