Jesus explains to Nicodemus that he must be born again: "…I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again" (John 3:3). Salvation is the beginning step in living a Christian life.
1. God's plan—Peace and life
God loves you and wants you to experience His peace and life.
Our problem—Separation
Being at peace with God is not automatic, because by nature you are separated from God.
The bible says: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
God's remedy — the cross
God’s love bridges the gap of separation between God and you. When Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave, He paid the penalty for your sins.
Our response — receive Christ
You cross the bridge into God’s family when you receive Christ by personal invitation.
The bible says: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12).
To receive Christ you need to do four things:
1. Admit your spiritual need. “I am a sinner.”
2. Repent and be willing to turn from your sin.
3. Belive that Jesus Christ died for you on the cross.
4. Receive, through prayer, Jesus Christ into your heart and life.
Christ says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the
door, I will come in” (Revelation 3:20).
The bible says: “Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).
The Lord Jesus Christ is also a true man he is no longer in the world. He was in the world, and one day he will be returning to the world, but now he has ascended to heaven.
While we followers of the Lord must remain in the world the man Christ Jesus is not in the world. We have to live without his physical presence every day of our lives. We do not apologise for this, or try to hide that fact from the young Christian. We are quite certain about it and we tell everyone that we “know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord”
We have to live our lives as Christians without any sound or smell or taste or touch or sight of the physical body of the Lord Jesus. He has a body which must be in one place, and it can and will be in that one place exclusively and for ever, and that place is not this world. It is never in this world.
Son of God is also always with us. He indwells us by his Spirit, he speaks to us by his word and so teaches us as our Prophet; he directs us according to his providence, protects us daily as our Shepherd.
“He sympathises with our grief, and to the sufferer sends relief.” There are such constant dynamics in the living and growing relationship which we have with him, but we constantly bear in mind that always we have to be “away from the Lord.”
We are always confident and know that the God-man remains seated at the Father’s right hand with all authority in heaven and earth his alone. There he will remain until the day of his second coming when he will return to this planet, and all his holy angels with him, to raise the dead and set up the judgment throne.
1. We Live By Faith.
“We live by faith, not by sight”
True happiness and contentment is found in living by faith and not by sight. We do not see Jesus because he is in heaven, but we may live fulfilled and useful lives without a sight of Christ because we live by faith.
Firstly, to live by faith requires us to know what we are to believe.
We are to give them information about the living God by every legitimate means. There are long-term evangelistic activities which every Christian church engages in. We may display a verse from the Bible outside our building. We may distribute through the neighbourhood calendars with texts for each month, or a church leaflet.
Consider the humble tract
To live by faith men must first have information about the one they must believe in, and the very manner in which we give that knowledge to them is as important as the message itself.
Secondly, to live by faith requires us to conclude that what we have come to know is true. We have to give our assent to its veracity
“Jesus of Nazareth is the long-promised Messiah:”
Paul had to defend and demonstrate that that assertion was true from the Scriptures as he got to his feet in the synagogues and as he presented that fact to his hearers.
Paul went into the Synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.
He did not mortar bomb them with one explosive statement after another and then stand back to see what effect his words had had. He explained the Scriptures and reasoned with them and sought to persuade them all that this was true. That is Christian evangelism.
We must know contents of the gospel of Jesus, but we must agree to the truthfulness of the message if we are going to live by it.
Thirdly, to live by faith is to wholly commit ourselves to the one we have come to know as the living God. It is essential to know the message. How can we believe in Jesus without hearing about him? But knowledge alone is not enough. We must go on to acknowledge, “This Christian message is true!” But just assenting to its truth is not enough. The devils believe that Christianity is true. We have to go one step further, and entrust ourselves, body and soul for time and eternity to this faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ alone. There is no other way that we can live by faith than that way.
Then work your way through the commitment of every part of yourself, and give the lot to the Lord: ‘Take my moments and my days … my hands … my feet … my voice … my lips … my silver and my gold … my intellect … my will … my heart … my love.” That is salvation. To trust is the very first act of a new-born soul. ‘I will trust.’ If you do not trust God for your salvation, you are not a Christian. The first thing you do in becoming a follower of Christ is to entrust yourself to him. You cease trusting in your own hunches, your own feelings, your own good life, your own religion, your own faith. You cease trusting in your praying.
You are given grace to put your trust solely in the living God and you come to an assurance that he has accepted you for the sake of Jesus only. You trust in the blood of Jesus who bore your punishment on the cross, and you believe that because he became the sin-bearing Lamb you will not bear any condemnation. That is trusting God. That is the beginning of living by faith, and you never move from that place for a single day of your life. You are never going to see Jesus Christ with your eyes while you are at home in the body, so you live by faith in him. So, saving faith is true knowledge. Saving faith is believing the truth for yourself. Saving faith is entrusting all of yourself to all of Christ – the Prophet who teaches you, the Priest who ever lives to intercede for you, and the King who protects and governs you. That is living by faith and not by sight.
We Make it Our Goal to Please Him in Everything.
“So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it”
“find out what pleases the Lord”
A Christian is a person whose desire everywhere and always is to please God.
We please the Lord by our evangelistic compassion. We are told of the Lord Jesus that when he saw the multitudes he had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. That is the attitude that pleases God.
We please the Lord by doing our daily work to his glory. Every day we seek to please him, not just in evangelism but in our vocation whether we are a housewife and mother, or a student, or if we have retired as a pensioner. We want to please the Lord in how we do our duties each day.
Some of you have men over you who are demanding, pointing out your every failure, even imagined ones, and never praising you for anything done well. To think that tomorrow at this time you will back in the office, or teaching in the school, or working at the factory, then that thought fills you with apprehension, but it is possible for you in that place to please the Lord and know his blessing.
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free”
We please the Lord by keeping Sunday special. You remember that there was a pattern to the weekly life of our Lord. We are told that he had just one ‘custom’, and he invariably kept it without exception, and that was to attend the synagogue one day in every seven.
We please the Lord by having a Christian home. God invented the family.
If unfallen Adam could have been quite happy by himself and thought “I like my space,” God would have said “No! That is not good for you. I have made you for communication and relationships and sharing.” There was then no sin in the world, but it was bad for man to be a loner. Nothing has changed. You need help from someone else. You rely on someone else to get through life, and there is someone who is relying on you, if only the fact that you are at the end of a telephone to speak to. Independence doesn’t please the Lord.
Marriage is two people sharing everything in their lives with just the other one. Marriage is a man saying, “I love you so much that I don’t want to go to bed with you just tonight, but I want to share a bed with you alone for the rest of my life, until death us do part. That is how much I love you.” That is the promise the husband makes: “I’ll always be around to look after any children that the Lord gives us.” And that sharing of our bodies is in the context of sharing our money, and frustrations, and possessions, and grandchildren, and senility, and in-laws, and deaths. We are one. And when the husband loves his wife so much that he would give his life for her, and nourishes and cherishes her, then he is showing something of Christ’s love. And the same tender, true love and submission is also to be shown by the wife. That is a Christian home that pleases the Lord.
This is my perspective of christianity but I keep in mind I'm a baby Christian and i can be wrong, so please if someone can correct me or give me some guidance I would appreciate it and received all your suggestions with a lot of respect, love and peace.
Blessings and love to everyone!!!
1. God's plan—Peace and life
God loves you and wants you to experience His peace and life.
Our problem—Separation
Being at peace with God is not automatic, because by nature you are separated from God.
The bible says: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
God's remedy — the cross
God’s love bridges the gap of separation between God and you. When Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave, He paid the penalty for your sins.
Our response — receive Christ
You cross the bridge into God’s family when you receive Christ by personal invitation.
The bible says: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12).
To receive Christ you need to do four things:
1. Admit your spiritual need. “I am a sinner.”
2. Repent and be willing to turn from your sin.
3. Belive that Jesus Christ died for you on the cross.
4. Receive, through prayer, Jesus Christ into your heart and life.
Christ says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the
door, I will come in” (Revelation 3:20).
The bible says: “Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).
The Lord Jesus Christ is also a true man he is no longer in the world. He was in the world, and one day he will be returning to the world, but now he has ascended to heaven.
While we followers of the Lord must remain in the world the man Christ Jesus is not in the world. We have to live without his physical presence every day of our lives. We do not apologise for this, or try to hide that fact from the young Christian. We are quite certain about it and we tell everyone that we “know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord”
We have to live our lives as Christians without any sound or smell or taste or touch or sight of the physical body of the Lord Jesus. He has a body which must be in one place, and it can and will be in that one place exclusively and for ever, and that place is not this world. It is never in this world.
Son of God is also always with us. He indwells us by his Spirit, he speaks to us by his word and so teaches us as our Prophet; he directs us according to his providence, protects us daily as our Shepherd.
“He sympathises with our grief, and to the sufferer sends relief.” There are such constant dynamics in the living and growing relationship which we have with him, but we constantly bear in mind that always we have to be “away from the Lord.”
We are always confident and know that the God-man remains seated at the Father’s right hand with all authority in heaven and earth his alone. There he will remain until the day of his second coming when he will return to this planet, and all his holy angels with him, to raise the dead and set up the judgment throne.
1. We Live By Faith.
“We live by faith, not by sight”
True happiness and contentment is found in living by faith and not by sight. We do not see Jesus because he is in heaven, but we may live fulfilled and useful lives without a sight of Christ because we live by faith.
Firstly, to live by faith requires us to know what we are to believe.
We are to give them information about the living God by every legitimate means. There are long-term evangelistic activities which every Christian church engages in. We may display a verse from the Bible outside our building. We may distribute through the neighbourhood calendars with texts for each month, or a church leaflet.
Consider the humble tract
To live by faith men must first have information about the one they must believe in, and the very manner in which we give that knowledge to them is as important as the message itself.
Secondly, to live by faith requires us to conclude that what we have come to know is true. We have to give our assent to its veracity
“Jesus of Nazareth is the long-promised Messiah:”
Paul had to defend and demonstrate that that assertion was true from the Scriptures as he got to his feet in the synagogues and as he presented that fact to his hearers.
Paul went into the Synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.
He did not mortar bomb them with one explosive statement after another and then stand back to see what effect his words had had. He explained the Scriptures and reasoned with them and sought to persuade them all that this was true. That is Christian evangelism.
We must know contents of the gospel of Jesus, but we must agree to the truthfulness of the message if we are going to live by it.
Thirdly, to live by faith is to wholly commit ourselves to the one we have come to know as the living God. It is essential to know the message. How can we believe in Jesus without hearing about him? But knowledge alone is not enough. We must go on to acknowledge, “This Christian message is true!” But just assenting to its truth is not enough. The devils believe that Christianity is true. We have to go one step further, and entrust ourselves, body and soul for time and eternity to this faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ alone. There is no other way that we can live by faith than that way.
Then work your way through the commitment of every part of yourself, and give the lot to the Lord: ‘Take my moments and my days … my hands … my feet … my voice … my lips … my silver and my gold … my intellect … my will … my heart … my love.” That is salvation. To trust is the very first act of a new-born soul. ‘I will trust.’ If you do not trust God for your salvation, you are not a Christian. The first thing you do in becoming a follower of Christ is to entrust yourself to him. You cease trusting in your own hunches, your own feelings, your own good life, your own religion, your own faith. You cease trusting in your praying.
You are given grace to put your trust solely in the living God and you come to an assurance that he has accepted you for the sake of Jesus only. You trust in the blood of Jesus who bore your punishment on the cross, and you believe that because he became the sin-bearing Lamb you will not bear any condemnation. That is trusting God. That is the beginning of living by faith, and you never move from that place for a single day of your life. You are never going to see Jesus Christ with your eyes while you are at home in the body, so you live by faith in him. So, saving faith is true knowledge. Saving faith is believing the truth for yourself. Saving faith is entrusting all of yourself to all of Christ – the Prophet who teaches you, the Priest who ever lives to intercede for you, and the King who protects and governs you. That is living by faith and not by sight.
We Make it Our Goal to Please Him in Everything.
“So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it”
“find out what pleases the Lord”
A Christian is a person whose desire everywhere and always is to please God.
We please the Lord by our evangelistic compassion. We are told of the Lord Jesus that when he saw the multitudes he had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. That is the attitude that pleases God.
We please the Lord by doing our daily work to his glory. Every day we seek to please him, not just in evangelism but in our vocation whether we are a housewife and mother, or a student, or if we have retired as a pensioner. We want to please the Lord in how we do our duties each day.
Some of you have men over you who are demanding, pointing out your every failure, even imagined ones, and never praising you for anything done well. To think that tomorrow at this time you will back in the office, or teaching in the school, or working at the factory, then that thought fills you with apprehension, but it is possible for you in that place to please the Lord and know his blessing.
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free”
We please the Lord by keeping Sunday special. You remember that there was a pattern to the weekly life of our Lord. We are told that he had just one ‘custom’, and he invariably kept it without exception, and that was to attend the synagogue one day in every seven.
We please the Lord by having a Christian home. God invented the family.
If unfallen Adam could have been quite happy by himself and thought “I like my space,” God would have said “No! That is not good for you. I have made you for communication and relationships and sharing.” There was then no sin in the world, but it was bad for man to be a loner. Nothing has changed. You need help from someone else. You rely on someone else to get through life, and there is someone who is relying on you, if only the fact that you are at the end of a telephone to speak to. Independence doesn’t please the Lord.
Marriage is two people sharing everything in their lives with just the other one. Marriage is a man saying, “I love you so much that I don’t want to go to bed with you just tonight, but I want to share a bed with you alone for the rest of my life, until death us do part. That is how much I love you.” That is the promise the husband makes: “I’ll always be around to look after any children that the Lord gives us.” And that sharing of our bodies is in the context of sharing our money, and frustrations, and possessions, and grandchildren, and senility, and in-laws, and deaths. We are one. And when the husband loves his wife so much that he would give his life for her, and nourishes and cherishes her, then he is showing something of Christ’s love. And the same tender, true love and submission is also to be shown by the wife. That is a Christian home that pleases the Lord.
This is my perspective of christianity but I keep in mind I'm a baby Christian and i can be wrong, so please if someone can correct me or give me some guidance I would appreciate it and received all your suggestions with a lot of respect, love and peace.
Blessings and love to everyone!!!
