It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2

Posts tagged ‘family of God’

The Prayer of Salvation and Making Jesus Our Savior  

Salvation is God’s gift to all humanity in allowing us another chance to be redeemed from our disobedience, our curse and our rebellious acts with the fall of mankind.  Salvation is a gift, no one can earn it or deserves it, but they can choose to accept or refused it. God has given us the simple act of the prayer of faith in His Son Jesus, to be rescued and delivered from sin and given eternal salvation. 

 This process may be simple but yet, it has a great, profound and overwhelming effect on our lives, our character and the people we influence.  The prayer of salvation is praying to God, asking for the forgiveness of our sins, because we believe in the blood, the death and the resurrection for the debt that Jesus paid for us on the cross.  By asking Jesus to come into our livesand to be our Lord and Savior our souls are save for eternity. 

 We are shown this process in the book of Romans. This is the prayer of faith and how we can become children of the Most-High God and be in the family and household of God. With our body we confess with our mouth Jesus is Lord over our lives and with our soul we believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead. Then the Holy Spirit comes and our spirit is made alive and we are made righteous by the Holy Spirit of God. 

Romans 10: 9-10 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. NKJ 

 Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.  NKJ 

Ephesians 2:19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. NKJ 

 God created us as a tri-part being; body, soul and spirit. We have a natural body created from the earth.  Oursoul, is our personality, character, intellect and will. It is our soul that gives us our individuality, it is our God given ability to choose our path in life and how we will develop our character, be it right or wrong.  

 Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. NKJ 

 Death can have two meanings; one is that a thing ceases to exist in its natural form and another is that there is a separation from the life-giving source that a thing needs to continue to exist in its current form.  When God created mankind, He breathed into themHis God like spirit and they became a living being with a soul and an eternal spirit like God, which will never cease to exist. 

 The day they rebelled against God and disobeyed His command, their God like spirit left the natural body and the man, as God had created him, no longer existed.  Their God likeness, His Shekinah Glory that shined bright all over them, their God like spirit, leftthem that day and their nakedness was revealed. Man as God had created and made him originally, died that day with the separation of the Spirit leaving mankind with just his body and soul. The body of mankind will later die when the soul returns to its source and maker.

Genesis 3: Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. 

 Through the confession and the prayer of faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit of God will come back into our hearts and our God given spirit will be born again. We can once again turn from death, to life everlasting and no longer be counted as one of the “living dead.”  The living dead are those whose body and soul is alive and functioning but their spirit is dead to the things of God. This is what Jesus meant when He said, let the dead bury their dead. He was speaking of those whose spirit was dead and not alive in Christ. 

 Matthew 8:22 But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” NKJ 

 John 20:22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. NKJ  

 God has given us the simple process to be saved, the ABC salvation; Admit, Believe and Confess which involves mankind as the tri-part being, body, soul and spirit. 

 Admit and say with our mouth, (which involve our body) that we are sinners in need of a Savior.

Believe in our heart, (which is our soul) that Jesus gave His blood, died on the cross and was raised again to pay our sin debt.

Confess that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior and there by receive the Holy Spirit (where by our spirit is reborn) to become a new creation in the family of God. 

 2Chorinthains 5:17-19 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. NKJ

 It is no longer the things we do, or do not do, but the choices we make for our lives and our future, that is our will. When we choose Jesus, and through the prayer of faith receive Him as our Lord, the righteousness of Christ will put us into a right standing with God and in His family. 

 God has given every person a free will to choose their path in life and who they will serve.  We are free to choose but we are not free from the consequences of our choices. We have been told to choose this day whom we will serve.

Joshua 24:14-15 “Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the Riverand in Egypt. Serve the Lord!   And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”NKJ

A seed that is planted in the soil is hidden from our eyes and though we cannot see the growth that is taking place in the soil, in time we will see the transformation of that seed, the growth and the fruit that is produced. This is much like the process of us being born again with the seed of God planted in our spirit though me may not see the growth immediately over time we will see a transformation. 

 We should be mindful of what seeds we are planting and thereby what crop we will be gathering. 

 When we truly believe and pray this prayer of faith, we can be sure that we are saved, by faith in God’s word. God’s word is our assurance and not our works, and by God’s promise we know that we are in the family and household of God.

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Reborn Into The Family of God

Adam and Eve were the highest of God’s creation, made in God’s image. They were the chief of all the created creatures of God and they were to rule and reign on the earth. Many people see Satan’s attack on mankind as an ultimate failure of man and of God. Man for disobeying God and God for not stopping Satan and allowing mankind to be doomed as long as they remained on the earth. This is a lie most have swallowed hook line and sinker! God’s ways are not man’s ways. What the enemy meant for our destruction God used for our greater good.

God sent His Son not only to redeem us from the fall but He elevated us to an even greater position, that of children! Just think of the power and authority we should be walking in knowing that we are now even greater than before the fall. But many are destroyed for we lack the knowledge of who we are in the family of God, His ways and His kingdom. Satan is a defeated foe by the power of Jesus Christ. We too have the same choice Adam had; we can believe God or listen to the enemy’s lie. We can choose Jesus’ saving grace or believe the lies of the enemy and trust our own thoughts and ways.

It is much like the story of Pinocchio who was a carved created puppet boy of Jeptoo and he was loved by his creator. What joy it brought Geppetto to have Pinocchio transformed into a living soul to be part of his family, his son. What joy God has for those who believe in Jesus and become His children, joint heirs with Christ. What the enemy meant for evil God turned to our greater good.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. NIV

The very act of sin that caused mankind to fall, God used as the reason to send Jesus to redeem us and place us into an even greater state, children of God, again we are joint heirs with Christ! God is awesome. Satan has no power of God’s people but there are schemes set up to convince people that God does not love us because He did not stop us from sinning. Truth is God loves us so much He sent Jesus to redeem and deliver us from eternal death while remaining true to His integrity.

God is not a man and He cannot lie. He must to stay true to His word and at the same time He must be a just judge while showing loving kindness and mercy to His creation. God gave dominion and rule to mankind and He could not usurp that authority even though mankind was not making wise choices. God loved us too much to leave us in eternal damnation so Jesus became a man. He limited Himself to become as one He created so that He would be able to save those who believe in God through Christ.

1 Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” NIV

Acts 13:38-39 Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.  Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin, a justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses. NIV

Being born again is being placed into a different family, culture and country. Being born again is becoming a totally different person from the one we were raised to be by our parents and life experiences. To be born again is to die to ourselves, our rights, and our culture even our race. We become a new creation in a new kingdom and this is where some people lose sight of the meaning of being born again. Many people want to hold on to their old ways of doing things, their thoughts and priorities and their prejudices. To be reborn into God’s family means our old life; race and culture should no longer take priority or first position over us. God’s kingdom and culture is our new way of living, He is preeminent over all.

We are now part of a new family, citizens of a new country and our allegiance is to our Sovereign King, Jesus. Many get stuck in their own ideas about their rights and ethnicity in the flesh that they fail to be transformed in their minds into the image of Christ and to make Jesus the Lord over all. There is so much division in the church, in the body of Christ because many refuse to let go of the old nature, old life and its priorities. When Jesus is King over our lives He will reign in every area of our life regardless of our past.

Romans 8:16-17 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Those who come to God through faith in Jesus as their Lord are like the jungle boy when he was taken out of the jungle. He still had the life experiences of the wolf influencing his nature though he was saved from the jungle. He then began living in a new world with humans but he had no concept or understanding of how to operate in this culture. At the same time he was being influenced by the only life he knew, with the wolves, however debased and deprived it may have been. This could be a child of God who was born again but whose mind has not been renewed to think and to act like a child of God. This is why God tells us to renew our minds, so to change the way we think and change the way we act. Then we will not be easily persuaded by the lies of this world.

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Again, we have been reborn into the family of God. Our life as a child of God is about a relationship with our Father. We were separated from God in the fall but were redeemed and reborn into the family of God through Jesus Christ. God’s desires are to fellowship and have a close relationship with His children. This may be why God gives us family; whether they are parents, siblings, children, cousins or close friends we have a desire to know and be in close fellowship with those we love. God has the same desire to be in fellowship and close relationship with His children.

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