Working within the limitations of this world
Successfully passing through this life on planet Earth is a very difficult task. Yet, our Father designed this training place for mankind to easily do what is required—yet keeping it as a spiritual bootcamp which trains us at the core of our being. He gave us an Owner’s Manual to explain what He has done. But I’ll bet you have never heard the plan.
Almighty God created the universe to produce friends and family who would genuinely choose to love him.
•Period•
To do that, He needed to create a people who were separate from Himself—who had no idea that He even existed. That meant He had to give these people free will. In other words, they had to be free to reject Him. This rejection would accomplish something which is absolutely necessary. It would make perfect and eternal people into self-centered beings with no direct knowledge of spiritual things, who would die.
He planned sin as a sure event because it accomplished two major problems. It would leave mankind in a world where he or she could not see spiritual things, and gave them an absolute deadline to make a decision about God. In addition, mankind would have access to the knowledge of good and evil which convinced him or her that they could figure out how to live well .
Having no conscious access to the spiritual world meant that pride and the lusts of the flesh would have absolute rule over mankind’s life in the flesh. Mankind would be so out of control that they would almost completely forgot that God existed. The only spiritual contact they had was with the Father of Lies and his minions—Satan. The devil is aggressive and pushy.
The Father was available to help His people. But they needed to ask for His help to get wisdom. Satan and his minions turned creation into an absolute abomination which is described in Genesis 6: 5–8.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
It was necessary for the memory of Eden to become almost completely lost. One way we see how that worked is through the descendants of Adam through Seth. We get a hint of what was happening in Genesis 4: 26, “To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time men began to call upon the name of the Lord.”
What is not said here is that the descendants of Cain did not call upon the name of the Lord. The wickedness of Cain grew into what we just read from Genesis 6. This is the importance of Noah. When we look at the genealogy of Seth we see a very important fact. Noah was the first man born in that line after Adam died. He was also the first of the line born after Enoch was raptured. What this meant was—
After the Flood, no one had any direct memory of Eden or Enoch
As a result, mankind got very evil quite quickly. Nimrod was the great grandson of Noah. The demons resulting from the flood got a strong hold of Nimrod and taught him the delights of sin and evil. With all the direct memories of Eden and the expulsion from the Garden gone, Mankind was in real trouble.
Now God had the people He needed to enact His plan. He began with Abram. Abraham’s descendants were chosen to bring the reality of Almighty God to mankind. Finally, after 2400 years, the Father could engineer the Exodus and the Law. The Owner’s Manual would give mankind the Law to know what He was supposed to do. But Mankind did not have the ability to obey the law.
After 4000 years from Adam, the world was ripe for the revelation of the Father’s Salvation. He sent us Yeshua, the Messiah. Finally, mankind was given the ability to freely choose to know, love, and serve the Father.
But it required the cross & resurrection
It still does. Mankind needs to volunteer for the cross and choose to believe in the Messiah. That seems pretty stark, but this really should be your starting point. Take up your cross and follow Me! The problem is that no one is teaching it these days. The sinner’s prayer method is not Biblical—it is a religious exercise that rarely and barely starts the rebirth process. It’s basically required by the reality of a spectator church these days.
Most pastors don’t even cover Peter’s response on Pentecost when the people asked the apostles, “Brethren, what should we do?” Peter’s reply seems to give us the entry point to the new life on the Kingdom. “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
Most churches have pulled this apart to the place where it rarely happens. First, repentance is almost never talked about. Even evangelists commonly focus on laying guilt on everyone, offering Jesus as the fix for guilt — forgiveness without repentance.
Second, baptism has been pulled back to a religious event which happens quite a bit later, and is often not part of the normal worship service of the church. It’s mainly used as the second religious step of salvation—the public confession.
Third, the Holy Spirit is reduced to a simple necessity for anyone to get saved. The Holy Spirit enables us to believe in Jesus. The radical empowerment of Jesus’ Baptism of the Holy Spirit is rarely mentioned as a normal part of the salvation process.
These three problems make it obvious why very few people are born again by saying a sinner’s prayer. As you may know, I normally help people meet the Lord from a position of discipleship. I usually have a relationship built on teaching scripture. I normally start by telling the person who wants to become a believer to ask the Holy Spirit to show them all their sin.
This works because the seeker of help is brought face to face with as much of their sin as they can tolerate. The normal method is to tell the people from the podium for the whole audience, or in a personal conversation, “In a normal voice, ask the Holy Spirit to show you all your sin. When you can’t stand it any more, ask Jesus what he wants you to do. He’ll take it from there.”
This is for people who find themselves in a spiritual crisis.
That was the starting point for most of the believers I know. Virtually every solid believer I know met the Lord in a personal spiritual crisis. Because of the normal evangelical methodology this often happens many years after they prayed the sinner’s prayer. For some of us, it happened at home as we came to the end of our rope. These days, Jesus commonly initiates the process—especially in locations where Christians are persecuted violently. But most of us were really messed up. Often we desperately needed deliverance from a demonic attack, in addition.
It’s certainly not the only way to come to the Lord. But it is much closer to Jesus’ injunction. Take up your cross and follow me. The cross is for death. These life-changing desperate needs (expressed by the person who wants help) make salvation a life-changing rebirth immediately. It normally initiates an on-going direct conversation with the Lord that continues throughout the earthly life of the believer.
Here is a generalized step by step process:
Realizing your need: Trying to talk people into getting saved often causes a person to say the sinner’s prayer to get you off their back. I want to avoid that. I simply try to answer all their questions.
Realizing your sin: a person needs to be aware of their sin and how messed up and evil they are. Asking the Holy Spirit to show him or her all their sin works well. This is a private thing between the person and the Lord.
Asking for forgiveness: this humility is required.
Experiencing that forgiveness: this really helps, but a simple stand of faith that they were forgiven works also. The change in the person is usually obvious from this point.
Realizing that they need help to stay in this position: Needing to know what to do, the Holy Spirit lets them know they need to accept that Jesus is Lord and King. They need to ask the Lord to come inside them to clean things out and make the relationship permanent. Jesus makes it real.
Thanks, praise, & worship: This is the normal outcome. It is commonly where the Lord can empower His new lamb. The worship gives Jesus an open door to do what He came to do—baptize His people in the Holy Spirit and Fire. You need to be teaching that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit normally occurs when a person meets Jesus. When the new believer starts to run out of words, encourage him or her to press on, for the Lord has a wonderful gift for those who press through the lack of words—a private prayer language.
Receiving discipleship: This is where they are taught that they are no longer in charge. Taking up his or her cross is a spiritual decision to kill the old man so he or she can recognize their death in the flesh. Kings have life and death authority. Our King certainly does. We each need to give up our rights to enable our new birth and a conversational relationship with the Messiah.
We voluntarily become his slave. We do this by picking up our cross as the instrument of death to our old carnal nature. That sets us free from sin. We are ready to freely follow the One who is worthy. We ask the Holy Spirit to show us what we need to change, and what He wants us to do. We do what we are told to do by the Spirit—simple obedience. We have reached the starting point of the Normal Christian Life. Another spanking-new baby has entered the Kingdom of God.
This is not a rigid legalistic method. Everyone meets the Lord differently because we are all unique. The Holy Spirit will modify the events to tailor each person’s individual experience to their gifts and personality.
Then we teach the baby how to read and study scripture.
We explain the gifts for everyday living provided by the Holy Spirit in I Corinthians 12.
We explain the power and usage of the private prayer language.
We teach how to talk with the Lord to get guidance and help.
We get the babe started on discovering who the Lord designed him or her to be.
We teach the practical realities of spiritual warfare.
Some time during this whole process, we get the baby to pray with us as we ask the Lord to provide a personal mentor in an ongoing relationship.
What a joy it is to bring a baby (who has actually picked up his or her cross) through youth, adulthood, and into maturity.