Becoming a Christian is a process

As I write these messages, I am very concerned that these Biblical truths are not being accepted as God’s truth like they were in the days of Christ’s apostles. The Gospel of Christ has been so watered down that most people can no longer accept the true Biblical truth because they have been taught and believe another truth (really deception) and believing it for many years, in most cases for generations. Back in the day of the apostles, people believed in part because of the miracles they saw the apostles and other Spirit filled believers do. So I’m praying for a miracle from God that would open up the eyes and ears of our current day church leaders and all the Christians around the world. A real revival back to God’s truth is needed.

As I was recently giving a message at a church service, I said “In the Old Testament, God worked most of His miracles in plain view of His people so they would believe, but in the New Testament, God works most of His miracles on the inside of man so each one of us will believe by feeling Him and His power on the inside of us”. This made me realize that there is a miracle I can talk about to help you realize what I am saying is the truth. It is the miracle that has happened in my life. How God has completely regenerated the sinful man in me into being Christ like. Everything I have written in my previous writings has happened to me and is so alive in me that I cannot hold it in; I have to proclaim this to anyone that will listen. I know this sounds prideful to some people, but this was not of my doing, it was only of God’s power. He has done it all. I want to tell you that I am a nobody, again I say I am a nobody that God has raised up to do His will through His Spirit. So if he was willing to use me, a nobody, He can do this for anybody willing to submit to His Lordship. This is what God has called all Christian to become and do.

In getting back to the process of becoming a Christian, we must know what the final result is, and that is becoming a real or true Christian. As stated in my previous writings a true Biblical Christian is totally devoted and sold out to God. He/she has committed everything that they hold valuable and has sacrificed it to God’s glory and work. A true Christian is a willing slave to God’s will. He/she is no longer having any selfish desires, but only loving desires toward God first and then to all people. A true Christian is always working at bringing others to a true relationship with God (making disciples). He/she loves God with all their heart, soul, and mind. True Christians know the only way to God’s eternal kingdom is through Christ, so they are fervently proclaiming the Gospel with the gifts they have been given. They know that people that are receiving a deception instead of the true Gospel is devastating to those people God loves. It is a spiritual life and death situation with eternal consequences. True Christians are not friends with the world, lovers of money, lovers of things, or lovers of themselves. True Christians always think of others needs above themselves. They are praising God the Father and Jesus continuously through out their day.

So, now knowing what a Christian is, we must admit that most of us aren’t at this holy or sanctified point at the time of our first acceptance of Christ. We must be made holy and perfected to being Christ like through a process call “sanctification”. Our society has been called the microwave society; we want everything to happen right now, no waiting, instant gratification. This is not how God usually works or what we can usually be able to do. When we first accept Christ as our savior, we usually can’t accept Him as total Lord of our life. The Bible says we must accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. The savior part is easy to accept because we are looking forward to receiving eternal life, but God’s Lordship of our life is required to be a true Christian and to really have eternal salvation. Lordship of our life is what most of us will not relinquish to anyone, even God. Some churches only preach and teach of Jesus being our Savior and not having to have total Lordship over our lives. This is a big and devastating deception. If Jesus is not allowed to have total control or Lordship over every part of a person’s life, there is no salvation for that person until he/she does. This is the reason God always puts the word Lord before Savior in the Bible.

This sanctification process to become a true Christian (born again) can take many years, sometime most of our life. Some people only come to this right before they die. Some people, even though they are in this process, never come to the point of becoming a true Christian and are lost to the devil because of their unwillingness to submit to Jesus’ total Lordship over their lives.

How long it takes to become a true Christian (born again) is totally dependent on our amount of faith in God and how much baggage we’ve have picked up in our life that we have to get rid of or let go of. When we are a child, especially in a Christian home, we have no baggage or only a little baggage to get rid of and when our parents tell us about Jesus through gospel messages and stories, we can easily have the faith to come to Jesus as Lord and Savior, because we believe what ever our parents tell us because we totally trust them. This is why Jesus says we must come to Him as a child.

If we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior as a child, we still have to persevere at keeping Him as our Lord and Savior. If we don’t, we must then get back to that point of submission or we still might be lost.

When we come to Christ as an adult, we already have a lot of sinful baggage. By this time we have already learned we cannot trust anyone, including God. We have learned to be very selfish through our sinful nature controlling us. The older we are when we come to Christ, the more excess sinful baggage we have to get rid of. All this selfish baggage that has been wound up into our life has to be unwound and this takes time and the power of God Holy Spirit to do it. This baggage must be gotten rid of by the process of sanctification and repenting. The flight to God’s eternal heaven does not carry any sinful baggage. We must let go of all this baggage before we board the flight. If we stay bound to our sinful baggage, we will not be allowed on the flight to heaven, but we will be picked up with the multitudes and thrown into the fiery bottomless pit, baggage and all.

May God’s grace be with you – Michael Reid