Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: GRADUATE (08/01/19)
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TITLE: IT ISN'T ONE AND DONE | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ramona Cook
08/04/19 -
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No one graduates from high school without having completed the first grade. There are steps to the levels of abilities and recognition that any of us acquire.
Popular in our Christian religious culture of today is the thought that we say “yes” to accepting Jesus as our Savior, and that’s it, it’s all done.
The truth is, it has just begun.
Realizing that we are a sinner, that God requires blood sacrifice for sin, that Jesus died shedding His blood, that God totally accepts that blood as the required sacrifice, then when we ask for forgiveness, God covers our sin with that blood and forgives us, THIS IS STEP ONE.
I am not suggesting that Step One ever needs to be repeated, but the fact IS, it is not all there is to being a follower of Jesus.
Step 2, is that we must read the Word of God applying ourselves to learning from the Word exactly what God expects from us. The Holy Spirit reveals truth to us as we read the Bible. John 8:31
At the same time it is good to get into a study group or Church.
It is always good to listen to preaching and teaching with critical thinking, to check what we hear by the Word itself. This is a continuous discipline for all of our Christian life.
As we read the Texts we are instructed and inspired, by God’s Spirit, to DO works that He has ordained us as an individual to DO.
Christianity is established by Jesus as a Do and Don’t faith.
Some call this stance “legalism” but it isn’t. It is as Jesus instructed us, as was written also in the Law of the former Covenant.
Yes, when Jesus died and resurrected the Covenant changed regarding many of the Levitical Laws; but as for the Ten Commandments, Jesus only “fulfilled them” He did not obliterate them or change them. Fulfilled not erased. Matt. 5:17
We are not saved by keeping the Law. We ARE instructed to judge ourselves by them.
Jesus said it this way, “IF you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, body and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself, THEN you will have fulfilled the Law of Moses.”
Jesus did all the Law required. No man of Adam can do that. So, Jesus righteousness is given to us when we join ourselves to Him, but doing His works then SHOW that He lives in us. John 14: 23, 24
Jesus tightened up the Ten Commandments for us in this current Covenant. Today, if one looks upon another desiring to commit sexual contact outside of marriage, it is as if we had done the deed. Under the former Covenant the act had to actually be done to be a sin.
The Ten Commandments remain what they were from the beginning, they are the method by which we can know we have sinned. 1 John 3:4
My point in this writing is to alert us all to the fact that we do not get forgiven of our SIN, that all humankind are born into, and our past SINS, and stop there. But rather, that daily judging of ourselves is necessary, to see to it that we confess our sins daily, even momentarily, so that we may live in a state of close relationship to God daily, and grow into higher levels of maturity and power in Christ Jesus. We want to graduate from glory unto glory.
There is an error that some teach, that once you have Jesus in your heart you do not anymore have any sins, that sins past and future have been forgiven. The Bible teaches otherwise. 1 John 1: 8-10
We MUST have Repentance and Revival in this Country, otherwise, we are toast. Our Nation is engaged grossly in sinful acts, even barbaric behaviors. Statues of Satan are being erected on our soil, and worship of Satan grows.
HOW, can we repent when much of Christianity have no idea what SIN in God’s eyes is, OR that we even need to confess and forsake our sinful acts?
The Church has failed one or two generations of human beings. Will God hold us guiltless?
We DO hope of reprieve IF we judge ourselves, call upon God, confess our sins, turn from them, and seek the face of God. 2 Chronicles 7:14
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