Saturday, September 24, 2016

Repent and Follow Jesus Christ





Believing in Jesus
Christ can only save you from hell if you obey Him, if you repent and
follow Him. Just believing in Jesus Christ cannot save you. You have
to come to Him on His terms on His conditions. You have to repent and
follow Jesus Christ. The natural man, normal man, normal person, is
selfish, self-centered, self-gratifying; his whole life is just about
himself, satisfying his own ambitions and his own desires, his sinful
lusts and therefore people sin. Because they are driven by lust and
by their own desires. A normal man is a slave to sin, and a slave to
his own ambitions. The normal man is the master of his own life, he
serves himself. The wages of sin is death and therefore the natural
man will end up in hell.
The only way to have
eternal life is to give up our rights to ourselves and to submit
ourselves to Jesus Christ, to obey Him and serve Him, live our lives
to please Him and then He will pardon our sins. He will make us new
inside, He will accept us and make us children of God. But we must
serve Him as Lord and Master.
There is a cost to
salvation, there is a cost to following Jesus Christ. It is such a
high cost that very few people are willing to pay that price. They
have wrongly been told that they only need to believe in Jesus Christ
to have salvation; that is a lie.
We have to follow and obey
Him, we have to submit our lives to Him and follow Him as disciples.
I read the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 16:24, "Then Jesus
said to His disciples: "If anyone wishes to come after me he
must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever
wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for
My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the
whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will man give in exchange
for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in all the glory of
His father with His angels and will then repay every man according to
his deeds."
We read in Luke chapter 14
verse 26 Jesus said:"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his
own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,
yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does
not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be My disciple. For
which one of you when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit
down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?
Otherwise when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish,
all who observe it begin to ridicule him saying: This man began to
build and was not able to finish. Or what king when he sets out to
meet another king and battle, will not first sit down and consider
whether he is strong enough with 10,000 men to encounter the one
coming against him with 20,000? Or else while the other is still far
away, he seems a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So then,
none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own
possessions."
That is the price of
discipleship; that is the price of salvation. We have to be willing
to give up our rights to ourselves, to our own pleasure, to own
ambitions, to our own desires, and we have to submit ourselves to
Jesus Christ. We have to turn away from the pleasures of sin and from
doing our own will and submit ourselves to Jesus Christ. We must die
to self and live for Jesus. We must live for His kingdom, we must
serve Him as Lord and Master. We must obey His commandments. If we
are not willing to do that, then we are wasting our time. If we start
going after Jesus and we're not willing to pay the price anymore we
will only be disappointed. We have to make up our mind before we
decide to go after Jesus Christ.
If you have counted the
cost and you have made up your mind that you want eternal life, that
you want to go after Jesus Christ, then you need to commit to Him. Go
on your knees before Him and accept Him into your life; accept Him as
your Lord and your Master. Give up your rights to your own self,
plead His pardon for your past sins. Be prepared to turn away from
your sin and your previous lifestyle of self-gratification, of doing
your own will. Cry out to Jesus, invite Him into your life; but be
serious. If you are serious then He will accept you, He will make you
knew inside and He will immediately give you peace and a joy that
surpasses all understanding. You will know in your heart that you
have met with the Living God, you have met with Jesus Christ. Then
you need to clean up your life; clean up your mind, clean up your
closets, your house, get rid of all those things that will separate
you from Jesus, friends, bad habits, sinful things, worldly things,
that were dear to you. Get rid of it and rearrange your life to be
able to follow and obey Jesus Christ, to be pleasing to Him.
Next you must be baptized
in water as Jesus commanded. I read the words of Jesus in Matthew
chapter 28 verse 19:"Jesus commanded:"Therefore go and make
disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and
the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything
that I have commanded you."
The words of Jesus, His
commands, the words that He spoke, they are the words of eternal
life. They are recorded in the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John; go and read them, study, keep them in your heart because the
Holy Spirit will remind you of those words. Those are the commands
that we have to follow and live by to be pleasing to Jesus.
We read in Mark chapter 16
those 15: "and He said to them:" Go into all the world and
preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been
baptized shall be saved, but he who has disbelieved will be
condemned. These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My
name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues,
they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison it
will not hurt them, they will lay hands on the sick, and they will
recover." These are the signs that will follow for those who
take Jesus Christ seriously who obey Him who repent and be baptized.
Jesus Christ promised the baptism in the Holy Spirit, His Spirit in
every person who believes in Him and who obeys Him, who repents and
who is baptized and who obeys His commands, who seeks Him with all
their heart. You need the Holy Spirit, the presence and the voice of
Jesus Christ in you, because you cannot follow Him if you do not know
His voice. Your relationship with Jesus Christ is through prayer,
through His Spirit dwelling in you, guiding you, and teaching you.
Jesus said: "My sheep hear My voice I know them, and they follow
Me." John chapter 10 verse 27. Verse 5, Jesus said:" a
stranger they will simply not follow but will
flee from him because they
do not know the voice of the strangers." We get to know Jesus
Christ through our relationship with Him, through His Spirit that
dwells in us, when we seek Him in prayer and He fills us with His
Holy Spirit; He imparts His knowledge and his presence into us. We
need to build our fellowship, our relationship with Jesus Christ, so
that we can know Him and follow Him. We need to obey His
commandments, and then He will reveal Himself to us, His commandments
as also recorded in the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Jesus said:"If you
love me you will keep my Commandments." We read in John chapter
14 verse 21:"he who has My Commandments and keeps them is the
one who loves Me, and he will loves me, will be loved by My Father,
and I will love him and I will disclose Myself to him." Jesus
Christ will disclose Himself to us, He will speak to us.
The apostle Paul wrote in
Romans 8:14, "those who are being led by the Spirit of God, they
are the sons of God." There's only one way to have eternal life
and that is Jesus Christ; He is the Way the Truth and the Life.
There's only one way to
follow Jesus Christ and have eternal life, and that is to obey Him.
Once we have believed in Him, we must obey His commandments, repent,
turn away from sin, be holy, turn away from our own desires, from
serving ourselves, we must put Him on the throne of our lives and
serve Him; we must be baptized in water and receive the baptism in
the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ living in us, to guide us, to
teach us. If we do not have the Holy Spirit, we cannot follow Jesus
Christ; without the Holy Spirit we have no relationship with Jesus
Christ. He promised His Spirit, the Holy Spirit in each and everyone
who believes in Him and who obeys Him, His communion with them. They
will know Him for real, they will know His voice and they will follow
Him. Have you repented since you have heard the gospel of Jesus
Christ? Have you accepted Him as your master? Do you serve and obey
Him? Have you received the baptism in the Holy Spirit? Does the Holy
Spirit of Christ live in you? Do you know His voice and do you follow
Him? We have to follow Him until the very end. If we do not follow
Jesus Christ and are not led by His Holy Spirit then we will never
know Him and we will never enter His kingdom. Repent and be baptized,
seek Jesus with all your heart be filled with the Holy Spirit, and
follow Him, the guidance of His Holy Spirit and He will guide you
every step of the way until the very end.
May Jesus bless you.

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