There are many phrases used when you accept Jesus into your
heart. I have heard that you are Born Again; you are a New Creature in
Christ, that you have a Rebirth, and I am sure the list goes on and
on. Truly what happens to us is more than a Rebirth it is a slow
and gradual change.
There is a cleansing of our internal self that happens when we
accept Jesus as our savior. We are not transformed physically and many do
not instantly receive a mental transformation but the ownership of your life
has changed. I own my home, so when I bought my home I signed a lot of
papers. I mean stacks upon stacks of papers. My home was owned by
someone else before I bought it, so they had to sign papers as well.
There were brokers present to make sure that everything was fair
for all parties involved. When I signed my papers accepting the
responsibility to purchase my home, I was saying, I would pay the mortgage
every month until I have completed the time allotted to pay back the full
amount owed on the home. When the old owners signed the papers they were
saying they agreed to all of my terms and were signing off their responsibility
and any ownership they had to the home.
To me this is kind of what happens when we accept Jesus into our
hearts. We are saying Jesus, I no longer want to be the principal owner
of my body, I want you to be the owner, and by confessing with my mouth that
you died for me, shed your blood for me, you are now the sole possessor of my
mind, body and spirit.
When I received keys to my home, I came in and made sure that
everything was as it was supposed to be and signed off on yet, another stack of
papers, and began to clean my house for the first time. I wanted to clean
the house, to make sure that everything was prepared for my belongings. I
didn’t want any trace of the prior family in the home, so I began to clean
away.
This is the same thing that happens to us after we accept Christ
into our hearts. Jesus will begin to clean away. Jesus is
perfect. He is without sin or fault, so he must perfect the place his is
going to inhabit. When you accept Jesus as your savior he comes and lives
in your spirit, so instantly your spirit is made perfect, since that is now the
dwelling place of our Lord. This is not something we feel or even
something that we notice, right away. What we notice is when he
starts to clean the rest of us.
God sends the Holy Spirit to start to work on us when we accept
Jesus, and that’s where the cleaning comes in. The Holy Spirit wants to
take the perfect will of God that is living in your spirit and have it invade
the rest of your body. The Holy Spirit wants to rid you of what is
negative in your life and fill you with the perfect will of God. This
hurts!
When I was cleaning my home for the first time, I scrubbed the
floors, the walls, the toilets and vacuumed everything. I washed
windows, which I very rarely do, and prepared my home for its new life, with
me. I was exhausted, sore and very tired by the end of the day. The
excitement that I had from the morning had gone away, due to all the work that
I knew lied ahead of me.
When we accept Jesus, there is an excitement, an expectation, that
we have. We have these ideas and thoughts, that life is going to be easier
or less painful. That things are going to come magically or that
problems won’t arise, and that’s not true. What is different is you
now have God to lean on when all of those things happen. You are now not alone,
when you have a problem or need. You have the power and authority of God
to walk you through whatever you are facing.
When moving day actually came, that day was a hectic and long
one. I was smart and actually hired movers, and will never move without
them, ever. I have a lot of steps so running up and down steps and
telling people to put boxes here or there, was still a lot of work. I
remember thinking I have too much stuff in my one bedroom apartment, but now in
my home it looked very empty. I had space to grow, because I had moved
some of my old things out of the way and created space for new things.
This is what is happening in you from day one. God is moving
old things out of your way to make room for new things. He wants to take
things that have held you back, kept you chained to the old you and fill you up
with things that will raise you higher in life. He wants to give you new
desires and new relationships. He will begin to trim away the friendships
that are not growing with you and this will hurt. He will start to change
your desires for things you used to do, and again, this will hurt. Slowly
and surely you will begin to notice that your life is not the same that it used
to be, and this will hurt.
I think we package accepting Jesus with all these tempting phrases
because if we told you how it’s going to hurt or the changes that you are going
to go through, people would be afraid. We are afraid of change, and
we hold on with everything we have, to some semblance of ourselves until we
can’t possible hold on any longer. We know what we look like now,
so to ask us to change is scary and daunting but the thing is what we are doing
now isn’t working.
Living your life for you, isn’t working. Living your life
selfishly isn’t working. Living your life in the bar, for money, doing
drugs, having multiple sexual partners, focused on emotional desires, isn’t
working! What is going to work is surrendering your life to
something that is bigger than you. Someone who knows your yesterday
from your tomorrow, and can take you exactly where you were purposed to
be.
We don’t need any special phrasings to know Jesus or accept him,
all you need to do is say, I need you Jesus, come into my Heart and be my
Savior. I believe You died for me, for my sins. I believe You
cleansed me of my sins with Your Blood and I believe that You are seated in
Heaven now. I believe You went to the Cross for me. I ask You to be
the Lord over my life and to come into my heart and guide me into the life You
have planned for me. I ask these things in Your name, Amen.
That’s it. If you have said that prayer, you have said the
prayer of salvation; you are now in a relationship with Jesus! He now
dwells on the inside of you. That decision will bring you more Hope
than anything in life ever will or could and soon the life that you thought was
so much fun, but always left you wanting more, will be a shell of itself,
and you will be filled with new desires and a new love that you have
never known.
Welcome… You are now, should we say…Born again…
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