The Five Steps - Part #4

Hear, Believe, Repent, CONFESS. When we teach God’s plan of salvation, we often minimize confession. As shown in the previous post, your response to Jesus Christ is deeply profound. Being confronted with the truth of Jesus Christ calls for a decision. Believing that Word drives us to repent. Jesus Christ transforms us from the very center of who we are. We have no choice but to proclaim to the world with our lives and tongue that we owe everything to the one who paid our price of sin. Confessing Jesus Christ as Lord is so important that Paul says in Rom 10:9-10 “That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and with your mouth, you confess and are saved.” NIV Have you ever noticed that our tongue seems to set the direction of our life? If you want to reach a goal, you tell people your plan, and you tell them repeatedly so that they know what you are after. When we confess Jesus Christ, it is not a one-time thing; we need to confess over and over so that others know the direction of our life. The confession helps refocus how we live, and it holds us accountable. The confession of faith declares the Lordship of Jesus Christ and lets everyone who hears know that I will do everything I can to obey. If you confess and don’t obey, you are just another talker. If you have indeed heard and you believed and repented, obedience is the next step. We will continue this discussion in my next blog. In Him J. Tom Washburn

The Five Steps - Part #3

Hear, believe and repent, as we continue looking at the five steps, we are going to spend some time looking at repentance. Too many people look at repentance as a simple apology. Repentance is not an apology, even though an apology may be needed, repentance is a change of heart and a change of life. Repentance is a change of the very paradigm by which you live your life. When you hear and understand the basic truth of a creator God. When you are confronted with His holiness and your unrighteousness, you understand the need for a redeemer. Jesus Christ is that sinless, righteous redeemer. He is the holy one of God and He died to pay the debt you could not pay. When you come to believe in Him as the Son of God, it demands that you make a choice. To choose Christ will demand a course correction (repentance) in your life. It demands that you strive to live worthy of the price He paid for you. You can never be worthy of His offering, and you can never earn His gift, but You can try to live in such a way that God is glorified, and Christ is proud of you. As I have stated in an earlier blog, repentance is a remaking of our life. It is a remaking of our priorities. Repentance is taking the person we were and offering it up to Christ as an offering of gratitude. Repentance demands that I now live my life for Christ and allow Christ to live through me. Repentance means that there is no turning back now, but when you truly hear and believe, there is no desire to turn back to the old life. The new life has more to offer than you can ever imagine. In Him J. Tom Washburn

The Five Steps - Part #2

When you look at the so-called “five steps of salvation," the first step is to hear. When you understand that to hear means to be confronted with the truth of the Bible, to be confronted with the truth of God, to hear calls for a response. You will either believe, or you wont. We either believe that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, or you don't. You either believe that God has set a standard , or you don't. To hear the message of Jesus Christ, to listen to the truth of God, is to be confronted with the fact that we are sinners and have a broken relationship with God. The only way to get that relationship back is through Christ. Either you believe that truth, or you don't. So those first two steps, to hear is to be confronted with the reality of the word, and to believe is that moment of decision when you choose how you will live. You see, what we believe affects the way that we live. What we believe determines the thing we do. If we believe there is a God, we will act in a way that glorifies The Creator. If we do not believe that there is a God, we will only act according to our best interests. There is a third position however. That decision is not making a decision. Too many people hear and like the idea of a God, but they are not convinced there is a God. Maybe they're not confident that there is a God because to admit there is a God is to admit there is a standard, and to admit there is a standard is to admit they are sinners. You see, to hear and to believe means that you place yourself under the authority of God. To believe is to say I put my life under the authority of God, and I agree that He is the one who has the right to set the standard. Those first two steps in that so-called “five steps of salvation” to hear and to believe are essential. To be confronted with the truth of God, we've got to face our mortality. Do I believe, or do I choose not to believe, do I believe that there is a God, or do I believe that all of this just happened? Do I believe that He has set a standard, or do I believe that I set my standard because I am my own God? You see, that moment of decision is a critical moment. It is that time that sets the direction of our life, the course of our life, and when we believe that there is a God, when we believe that there is order to this universe, when we believe that he sent His son because He desires for us to live with Him for all eternity it changes the way we live. So, hearing and believing are two essential steps. Next time we're going to look at that step of repentance and what repentance looks like, but today I want you to contemplate what you believe. Do you believe in God, or do you believe in yourself? Have you placed yourself on the thorne of God, or have you realized that it is only in God that there's any hope? It is only in Jesus Christ, in God the Father, in Yahweh, and His Spirit that you have any hope. I hope today you'll choose to believe in the God of all creation. In Him J. Tom Washburn

Relooking at the 5 steps

The five steps of salvation are a nice, easy little memory tool to help us learn God's plan for salvation. The problem with reducing the great truth of God’s salvation to just five simple words takes away from that dynamic transformation that needs to occur in every believer’s life. While the idea of hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized are all found in scripture, they fall flat when we exclude Jesus Christ from the process and when we take that most passive definition of each word because when we do that, we minimize the gift that God is giving us. Over my following few blogs, I want us to explore those five words because, in those five words, there is a depth that we need to understand if we're going to allow God to take control of our lives and if we're going to allow God to use our lives for his glory. Our selfishness often gets in the way of our usefulness, and we need to understand that we have a purpose, and our goal is to glorify God, not to seek our comfort and not to seek our glory. Our aim is to figure out a way to hold God up to a world that desperately needs Him because our world is lost. Let's start with the word hear. To hear does not mean to acknowledge a sound. To hear means to be confronted with the truth being presented to you. You can't believe it unless you hear it. We are talking about that absolute truth that there is a God and that there is a maker, and if there is a God and there is a maker, then I am the created, and He is the one who has charge, and He is the one who is in control. Yes, He has given us free will. Yes, He has given us a choice, but I need to be confronted, I need to hear, I need to stand in front of that truth that's right there and acknowledge I am not all there is. There is one so much greater than I that I have difficulty comprehending His greatness and power. I have a purpose, and it is serving Him. When we talk about hearing, we're talking about being confronted with that truth and having to look at it in our uncleanness, being confronted with His Holiness. We must look at our inadequacy against His power. Then we can begin to understand when we hear that something is desperately wrong with the way we live our lives. There's something desperately wrong with how the world is living because when we hear the word of God and the creator of this universe, it throws us to our knees and causes us to begin searching for something greater. Too many times, Christians have lost the ability to hear. They listen to the noise. They can even repeat the words. They seldom take the time to meditate and contemplate God's profound nature and truth. When they talk about salvation, the beginning should always include there is a God, He is the creator, He is God, and I am not, and I need to listen, I need to hear, and I need to contemplate the holiness and truth that He gives to me. In Him J. Tom Washburn

Thinking of Others

I restarted this blog to inform you about my cancer journey and the lessons I was learning along the way. There are so many lessons I have learned and so many more I am still learning. I believe everything that happens in our lives is meant to teach us something about God, or it is intended to point us to God. Some lessons are easy to understand and see during the experience; other lessons take time to process and take time to unfold. One of the easy lessons to see was the lesson of humility and dependence. At one point in the treatment in the hospital, I lost all control over my bodily functions. As a grown man, it was humbling to ask for help, but Julie's help only made me love her more and more. In our walk with Christ, there are times we are helpless, and the service we receive from the believers, while humbling us, only draws us closer to The Body and Christ. I am getting stronger now, and, in many ways, I can take care of myself now, but I must never forget the journey and the lesson of humility. Humility is not one of the celebrated virtues in our society, but it is one of the identifiable characteristics of Christ, and as such, it needs to be present in all His followers. In Philippians 2:8, Paul says Christ humbled Himself. Notice that this was not something that was done to Him. Instead, this is what He did Himself. Pride and arrogance destroy so many relationships and create so many barriers. Christ came to destroy those barriers, and a humble spirit is a part of the unification process. Live your life for the glory of God. In Him J. Tom Washburn

Fifty-one Days

Do you remember the road trips you would take as a child? I remember sleeping on the floorboard in the summer and sleeping in that space next to the back window in the winter. Times have changed, and our kids and grandchildren can’t do that anymore, but there is still one thing about long road trips that is still the same; at some point, somebody is going to ask, how much longer? The answer would often come back, just a little longer, and then there would be some form of encouragement to sit back and enjoy the ride. Today marks forty-nine days of quarantine. Julie and I only have fifty-one days of quarantine left before we get to be in the presence of those we love. We miss the fellowship of the believers. We miss holding our kids and grandkids. We miss having face-to-face conversations. We miss the crowd’s laughter and the sheer joy of being with others. Yes, there is a joy that comes from being with others, and a greater joy will come when we are finally in the presence of Jesus Christ, The Father, and The Spirit. I don’t know how much longer it is until we hear the trumpet call, but I can say it will happen in just a little while, so sit back, enjoy the ride, and glorify God that this life is not all there is. In Him J. Tom Washburn