Introduction
Your life started without Christ. When you receive Him, your life gets better spiritually and with time it will manifest in the physical. You are soon known for truth and honesty, a hard-working and trustworthy person.
The journey to salvation
is a wonderful one described in Mathew 11:28, where the Lord invited all
who are heavy laden to come to Him for rest, He promised to give them rest.
Salvation is reconciling with God. To reconcile with the
Almighty God is a blessing because the Lord will give you a new spirit, the
Spirit of God. That Spirit is called the
Holy Spirit, who will be with you everywhere you go, to guide you, and to give
you success in your work or business.
With the Holy Spirit in you, fear is destroyed, and your
paths are ordered by God, to go to the right places and to do things right.
When you receive Jesus into your heart, you are no longer alone, you have the
Helper by your side. The creator of
heaven and earth is on your side.
Everything about you becomes new, your hope and trust are
fixed on the Lord instead of your own ability.
One of the few things you will notice is that your prayer requests are
speedily answered. The Lord will grant
your heart desires and direct favour your way to reduce your struggle and put
smiles on your face. He takes charge of
your life, including your enemies.
Common Attitude of Man
People have the tendency to blame others for their
troubles and failures in life, without seeing their input. It must be a curse from someone they will
say, others blame the devil, their parents and in many cases their inlaw for
their woes.
How many people will remember that everything was working for Adam and Eve in the garden until sin came? Adam did not know that the consequences of sin were grave and they jokingly ate the fruit that God had commanded them not to, and that was it.
Immediately, their nakedness became glaring to
them and they could not stand before God any longer. The separation was almost automatic, and I
guess they did not know it would mean everything to them.
That is how it is today when people sin. Sin not only
separates us from God, but it also disorganizes God's plan for that person and
makes it difficult for the person to pray or fellowship freely with God.
God created Adam and Eve to live forever, but sin came
and that plan was truncated. It was so
because the wages of Sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord Romans 6:23. God knows that without Christ, man will only
grope in darkness and slumber deeper into evil.
If there is no fear of the Lord, a person can continue in sin to a
point, where he does not see evil as wrong.
Each time you analyze the defences people give for sin,
you can easily see self-deceit or delusion.
Instead of accepting you have a high temper, which causes you to beat
your wife, you are deceiving yourself that she enjoys being beaten.
Man has the nature of sin, which is the inherited nature
of satan, acquired after the fall of man.
The bible says that is why God has to send His begotten Son, Jesus
Christ to die for our sins. Christ is
not in the world, but His Word and His Spirit, the Holy Spirit is available to
help you live an acceptable before God.
Hear me beloved, once you receive Jesus Christ as Lord
and Saviour, you will also receive the Spirit of God and the gift of
righteousness, what is left is for you to align yourself with the Word of God, and
you will easily live above sin. If you
will love holiness and hate iniquity as Jesus did, you can trust the Lord to
help you live right, one day at a time.
That is the greatest victory of all.
Sin is the cause of sicknesses and death, and overcoming
sin means that every other battle is secondary and easier to win. A win over sin is a win over the devil, the
author of sin and lies. No man can deal successfully with the problem of sin
except through the blood of Jesus, and there is no salvation without Christ.
Jesus was born specifically to take away your sins. He is called the Saviour because of your sins
- Mathew 1:21. So, receiving Christ is
the beginning of victory over the devil and sin.
Steps to Salvation
1. 1. Belief in the Word of God:
Belief is the first step to salvation. This is also called faith, which comes from
hearing the Word of God and accepting the sacrifice made by Christ at the cross
of calvary. When you realize your life
is not right with the word of God.
When you desire to know God closely and to live a better
life according to His Word and to enter into eternity in heaven, then your
heart will seek the Saviour, Jesus Christ, through whom you can have victory
over sin and sinful lifestyle.
You have to accept you are born in iniquity, and you
cannot win over sin and the devil with your willpower alone. You are helpless without God because the
devil is a wicked spirit that knows where and when to tempt a person.
2. 2. Confess, repent and receive Jesus:
The next step is to confess your sins before God, repent
and forsake them. You will invite Jesus Christ to come into your life, and be the
Lord and Saviour of your life. This is a
solemn action done through prayer, after which you believe by faith that you
are saved.
3. 3. Water Baptism:
Immediately a person believes in the Lord Jesus and the
sacrifices He made on the cross to redeem us from sin and death, the next stage
is water baptism. We are to be baptized
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Baptism is done on a flowing river or pool of water, which symbolizes
death with Christ, and to sin when a person is bodily deep into the water. When he is raised from the water, that
symbolizes resumption from death with Christ unto newness of life.
Water baptism is a necessary formality that completes the
salvation experience, leaving the new convert with the responsibility of his
new birth. You are saved from darkness
and all the worldliness like pride, envy, and quest for power and fame. You are delivered from living your own life
instead of the God kind of life. You are
delivered from living without God and the word of God.
4. 4. Positive public declaration of your faith:
It is important that you let your friends and relatives
know about your new life in Christ. You
are to speak your faith in Christ openly.
You are expected to study the Word of God daily and practise the word in
your everyday life. Practise the Word of
God, keep your heart open and pure to receive from the Lord and be ready to
obey the voice of God and obey them. It
is important to confess the scriptures, it is more important to reflect on the
scriptures in your daily living.
5. 5. Establish a personal relationship with Christ:
You must seek to know the person of Jesus Christ, your Saviour
and enter into a personal relationship with Him. A life of relationship with
the Saviour is the most interesting of all the steps of salvation. This is like a father-son relationship that we
are familiar with. You are the child and Jesus is your Father.
As a child depends on the earthly parents for his feeding
and care, so it is with your heavenly Father, so you carefully adopt a
lifestyle of trusting Him for everything you need and expect to have. You
must know the God you are serving!
You wake up in the morning to thank Him for preserving your life through the night, thank Him for your daily provisions, protection and safety. Commit the day into His hands and ask Him to go with you everywhere you will go and help you.
When you are leaving the house, you ask Him
to go with you and when you return, you kneel down and thank Him for going with
you and returning with you. Let your
Saviour be real in your life because He is actually not far from you.
Benefits of Salvation
1. The Lord inherit your enemies - Whenever you become beloved, your battles become the Lord's battles.
2. The Lord will make a way for you. When you receive Christ as Lord and Saviour,
He will make a way for you in places where there seems to be no way or
hope. In every situation, He will show
you the light on how to enjoy the best of even a bad situation
3. Freedom from bondage - No truly saved child of God can
remain in the bondage of any strong man or woman for long. Whatever be the bondage of the enemy upon
your life, if you become God's child, He will make a way of escape for you.
Remember there is nothing too difficult for Him to do. Psalms 28:8 says God is the saving strength
of His anointed. God becomes your
strength to accomplish all things.
4. Bundles of Blessings - Children of God are blessed in
this life. They plan, work hard and God
brings the increase. Many people who
fail encounter failure due to darkness around them, but when you become a child
of God, the triumphant light of God in you and around you will swallow such
darkness, limitation and spiritual roadblocks hindering your progress in the
past.
5. Commanded Blessing - The Lord will command the
blessings of Abraham on you, the anointed and godly sons and daughters. God
rebukes Kings and other influential opponents standing in the way of your
blessing to give way, according to Psalm 105:14-15.
6. Protection and divine health - The Lord, the great
physician Jesus Christ becomes your Doctor, healer and deliverer of your life
and family. You just draw by faith from
the well of salvation...anything you want. Healing, deliverance, jobs, children
etc.
Demands of Salvation
With salvation, a lot is also expected from a newly
converted person. You were living your
own life before. You lived as you want,
and how you like. Now, you are to live
by the word of God and according to what God says.
Nobody encounters Jesus Christ and remains the same, His
Spirit in you will cause a change of mindset, thinking and other ways of
life. When a smoker receives Christ,
smoking disgusts him and he sees everything wrong with it. The same with an angry and abusive person.
That person becomes quiet and patient, refusing to talk when you annoy
him. He will hardly be quick to talk or
condemn people because there is a new spirit in him.
That was why John the Baptist told the people coming to
his baptism to:
"Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance, and not to think or say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
According to him, the axe is laid unto the root of the
trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down
and cast into the fire.
Salvation demands evidence. If you are saved, your speech, the word you
speak, the choices you make, and the way you see things and relate to people will
show it. God and people around you will expect to see a repented man or woman,
who fears the Lord and obeys His Word.
CONCLUSION:
Confess your sins to God and ask for His forgiveness,
believe He has forgiven you. Then ask
Jesus to come into your heart, and be your Lord and Saviour. Believe the Lord has also accepted your
request and His Spirit is already inside your heart.
If you said that prayer from your heart, know for sure
that you are BORN AGAIN, a new baby in the kingdom of God. You have also
received the power to be the son or daughter of God. As you study the bible and obey the word of
God, the changes taking place in your heart right now will begin to manifest
for people around you to see.
Reference
scriptures:
Titus 3:5 - He saved us, not because of works are done by us in
righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration
and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 10:9 - Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved.
Acts 4:12 - And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name
under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
Ephesians 2:8 - For by grace you have been saved through faith. And
this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.
John 14:6 - Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
1 John 1:9 - If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 5:13 - I write these things to you who believe in the name of
the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.
1 Peter 2:24 - He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that
we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed.
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