Congratulations! You are at that point where you are interested in becoming a believer!

Everybody finds themselves somewhere on this journey at some point in their lives. Many have been taught faith lessons as children only to abandon them somewhere along the way. Many return to explore the issues of faith as they mature.  You may have gone along for years not really that interested in faith. Then something happens. You are not sure how, but you begin to wonder if there is more to life than just making money, and getting stuff. Perhaps you have had an occasion to think about life and death questions. What happens to people when they die? Is this life all there is? Or maybe you just approach things more philospohically. What are the answers to the big questions of life? Where do we come from? How did we get here? Does anybody have a good reason why we should live a certain way, and not another? Is there anything worth living for? What’s my purpose?

Life!  The Bible says that anyone can have a full and meaningful life. Jesus said once, “I have come that you may have life in all of its abundance.” (John 10:10)  The central message of the Bible is that God loves us and He has a plan for us. (John 3:16, Jeremiah 29:11)

Sin  What causes us to miss out on God’s love and His plan for us? In a word, “sin.” Sin separates us from God, from others,  and from our best selves. Sin is described in the Bible in a lot of ways. Going my own way and refusing to acknowledge God as my creator. (Isaiah 53:6 “All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way.”  Romans 3:23 “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”) One word for sin in the Bible is “to miss the mark.” We miss God’s love and miss out on His good plans for our lives when we choose to do our own thing.

Death  This inevitibly leads to heartache, pain, and ultimately death. (Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death.”) The theologian Augustine said, “We are restless until we find our rest in Thee.” People spend their lives trying to fill a God-shaped vacuum with all kinds of things that cannot satisfy. Instead of leading to peace and contentment, this often as not results in even further entanglements, and greater estrangement from God, and others.

Hell  The truth is that unless something happens to change the course of things circumstances will continue to get worse. Things tend to become more of what they are. An unhappy person will grow more and more unhappy. An angry individual has a tendancy to become even more so. Greedy folks usually only want more, and more. When we think in terms of eternity this can be a pretty good picture of hell. Can you imagine growing more, and more cold and uncaring, angry, and filled with greed throughout eternity? Unless something happens to turn things around we all have the potential to shrink in our capacity to be good, and loving, and kind, untill there would be hardly anything left at all; certainly nothing left of any real value. Jesus described such a wasted existence, cut off from God, and all goodness, as a place of torment. He spoke of a place of separation and isolation from God, and from loved ones, which he likened to a trash heap where the fire never goes out, and the worm never dies. But here’s the Good News. No one has to end up on the trash heap of eternity! Nobody has to be assigned to the place of torment and separation from everything that is right and good in the universe. In fact, Jesus died so you would not end up there.

Heaven  Remember we said that Jesus offers life in all of its abundance? This begins in this life and goes on forever in eternity. “Eternal life” is the expression used in the Bible to speak of exactly the kind of life that doesn’t end on the trash heap. The truth is that we have been made by God, and our lives do not end at death. We will spend our lives, both now and forever, either loving God and enjoying being a part of His family, or separated from Him and from everything that is good. There is no middle ground. Jesus said before He went to the cross to die for our sins, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. no man comes to the Father, but by Me.” John 14:6

In Acts 4:12 we read, “There is no other name under heaven that is given among men by which we must be saved…” That’s what we mean when we say that Jesus is the only hope of salvation. Jesus spoke of life as a journey down a road. He said that the broad way was filled with travelers, but the narrow way was hard, and few traveled on it. How can we get off the broad road that leads ultimately to destruction, and find the path to eternal life?

Found by God  You may not full understand, or be able to explain just why it is you are thinking about following Jesus. The Bible teaches that it is the work of God’s Holy Spirit to draw us to faith in Jesus. You may have thought that you were inquiring into the things of God, but the truth is probably more that God has been drawing you to Himself for sometime. God believes in us long before we believe in Him. (“It is by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, lest anyone should boast…” Ephesians 2:8ff)

Repentance and Faith  We must all turn from sin and self, and trust Christ and Him alone for salvation. You can never earn the right to be saved. Jesus secured our right standing with God on the basis of His righteousness; not ours. We could never keep God’s Laws perfectly even if we tried. We would always “miss the mark.” Jesus is the only person who ever lived a sinnless life. If we are headed in the wrong direction and we want to go in a new direction, we must turn around. Repentance is the Bible word for that turn from sin and self to trust in Christ. The poet said, “Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling.” That childlike trust, or faith, in the fact that Jesus does for us what we cannot do for ourselves is what the Bible calls “believing in Jesus.”

How do I trust Jesus to save me?

Admit  Just stop trying to cover up your sin, and admit it. The word “confess” in the language of the Bible means literally to “say the same thing.” Say the same thing about your sinful condition that God says. Agree with Him that you are a sinner, and you cannot save yourself.

Believe  This is where you exercise your faith. Belief in the Bible is not passive. Place your whole life, and complete trust in who Jesus is, and what He has done for you. It is one thing to know some facts about the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. “He was born in Bethlehem, and we celebrate that on Christmas. He is supposed to have risen from the dead, and that’s what Easter is all about, if you believe it.” No! It is an entirely different thing all together when you realize that you do believe that Jesus is exactly who the Bible declares Him to be! He is your only hope of salvation! You know that you personally are a sinner, and without Him you have no way of appearing before a Holy God! Call out to Him to save your soul. Tell Him that you are sorry for the mess you have made of your life, and that you need His help. Invite Him to come into your life, and be the boss of your life. Ask Him to make you the person He wants you to be.  (Romans 10:9-10  “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”)

Confess  Earlier we saw how turning fromsin and self invloves agreeing with what God says about our sinful condition. The Bible also indicates that we should use our lips to confess our trust in Christ. Everyone that Jesus called to Himself He called publiclly. Jesus told those following Him that if they would confess Him before men He would confess them before His Father in heaven. Tell someone that you are a follower of Jesus. There is something about speaking those words to another human being. God will honor your faith! In most churches you can find a pastor, or teacher who will help you understand the Bible and who will encourage you in your decision to follow Jesus.

In our church we have a kind of three step process that people typically go through. At the end of our worship services we offer an invitation for those who wish to publiclly declare their faith in Jesus. You may have seen someone walk the aisle and talk with the preacher. That is the first step. The minister usually asks the individual to express what they are doing. (Confess. “I want to be a follower of Jesus.) Often at that point, or soon after, the minster will ask about Baptism. Some people have been sprinkled as small children, but many have no idea about what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus taught His disciples that baptism would be a representation of our union with Him. For us a service of baptism is step two. Jesus also instituted a symbolic eating of a meal together that reminds us of His body broken and His blood spilled out for the remission of our sin. Once you have been baptized, and as you are growing in your understanding of the things of the Lord, you will want to be in a church where you can worship Jesus by taking the Lord’s supper.

Step three? It is how you live your life everyday! Growing as a believer obviously invloves fellowshipping with other believers and reading the Bible to help you get to know the Lord. Prayer is simply talking to God and telling Him everything that is on your mind. He will actually live in your heart and life now, and so you will find that you have a desire to pray, and worship God, and grow,  like never before.

Someone might ask, “But what if I mess up?” And, of course, you will. We all fall down and slip back into sin on occasion. That is why we need one another for accountablility. Hopefully we will learn to do better as we go along, but in any case the Lord knows our weakness and He wants us to grow more and more like Him. (“If we say we have no sin, we lie, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sin He is faithful and just to forgive us, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  I John 1:9)

A prayer of faith  Prayer is not magic. It is not a matter of saying certain words in just the right way to get the trick to work. God already knows what you are going to say before you form the words in your mouth. When someone wants to ask Jesus to come into their life and save them, you can be sure that God has already been working to draw that person to that point. The devil certainly doesn’t want anyone to trust Jesus and be saved! In fact, he will provide every possible interruption to keep that prayer from going up to God. but God does want us to call on Him. He does want us to trust His plan of salvation. He wants more than anything for us to love Jesus and give our lives to Him. Won’t you trust Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, today?  You might pray a prayer something like this…

“Dear Jesus, Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I believe that you rose from the dead, and that you are the Son of God. I know I am a sinner and I cannot save myself. I am truly sorry for all the things I have done, and right now I want to turn from sin and self, and trust You alone to save me. I invite you to come into my heart, and ask that you would please forgive me. Make me the person You want me to be. Help me to follow You. Thank you for offering me life, and love, and so many things I don’t deserve. I love You, and want to follow You all of my life.”

Dear friend, if you prayed a prayer like this, then I can tell you that the Lord has heard your prayer, and He gives you the right to be born again; to be His child. (John 1:12ff  “…to as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to be children of God, even to those who believed on His name…”)

Thanksgiving  Once God has brought you to the place where you can admit your need of salvation, and you have come to believe in Jesus, and you have trusted Him and invited Him into your life, then you need to begin to thank God. Some people think that this all sounds too easy. (They should really try to convince someone of their need to follow through with God’s simple plan of salvation! A sinner who has not come to that place of recognition of their need is often stubborn, proud and difficult to talk to.) The truth is that no one can call on the name of the Lord unless the Spirit of God draws them to faith in Jesus. Of course, once you have trusted Christ there is much more you can do! The Bible describes a new believer as a little helpless baby who needs to feed on God’s word, grow, and mature. (“Like newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby with respect to salvation.”  I Peter 2:2)

Tell somebody about what you have done! The Bible says that the angels in heaven rejoice whenever anyone is saved. You may not feel any different. We are all made up differently when it comes to our emotions. Some cry easily. Others whoop and hollar at ballgames. Still others are hardly moved emotionally, even in an emergency. Feelings are not what matter. What matters is the truth of God’s word, and your faith response to it. If you believed the Good News that Jesus Christ is a friend of sinners, and you invited Him to come into your life by faith, to be the boss of your life, then on the authority of God’s word I can tell you that you are different! (“If any man is in Christ he is a new creation; the old things have passed away. Behold! The new has come!”  II Corinthians 5:17)

Thank God as an expression of your confidence, not in yourself, but in what Christ has done for you. If you have asked Jesus to come into your life His word says “He will never leave you nor forsake you.” Welcome to the family of God! We would love to hear from you and we have a class that you may want to attend to help you in your walk with the Lord. If you don’t have a Bible we will be glad to help you have your own copy of God’s word. Please, contact us and let us know how we can help you. We are here to serve you!