Our third step into the Salvation is to make a definite decision to give our old life to the Lord, so He could change us to His Image, which is the Will of Our Father.
Giving our old life to the Lord begins by OPENING OUR HEART to Him! The door to our heart is also the door to our soul and our old life exists in our soul. Therefore, if the Lord has no access into our heart, He has no access into our soul and He can do absolutely NOTHING with out old life. We can pray as much as we want, read the Scripture as much as we want, read books or testimonies of other servants of the Lord, we can have the most sincere and honest desires and goals, when our Creator and Saviour is not in our heart, then absolutely NOTHING will take place there – no spiritual change. Our Salvation-Perfection can be expressed in one word – CHANGE. It is a CHANGE of our being from an old-earthly one to a new-heavenly one. Without this change of our being, God will not receive us to Himself as it would not be possible for Him to have with us any fellowship, not now and definitely not for the eternity. Therefore, any believer, who is not willing to be changed according to the Will of God, cannot be saved! The Church of Christ absolutely does not realize this simple, but most important fact! That’s why this basic and absolutely vital Truth was never preached and never will be. This is Satan’s success.
Our Salvation is free – if we receive it into our soul! It is something new, sinless, heavenly, that is to enter into our soul and replace there something old, sinful, earthly. It is, as it were, “heavenly furniture”, which is being moved into our soul as the old “earthly furniture” is being thrown out of our soul. For that new furniture we pay with our old furniture. Therefore, if for any man his old furniture is more valuable than the new one, then the man can never be saved! In many places the Scripture stresses and encourages us with declarations like: Be strong! Be persistent! Be steadfast! Be effective! Continue, do not stop!… and the like. What does it mean? What does it suggest? Why does the Scripture deem it necessary to underline for us such things from its beginning to its end? Because the tendency, inclination, natural trend of all things, including all human beings in this old creation and in this kingdom of Satan, acts exactly in the opposite direction. It wants to turn us back, pull us back, keep us where we are, keep us from progressing and reaching our goals and that by any available means, even by such we never dreamed about or can never imagine or realize.
There are innumerable things, which always try to have upon us this influence and we are almost never conscious of their existence and disastrous activity. There is always something that will attract us and demand our attention and that precisely at the time when we are about to make some spiritual step, when we are to spiritually progress or to achieve spiritual success, whenever we desire to come to the Lord, etc. If we pause and let that thing get our attention and allow that thing to make us busy, then we will stop to continue and remain standing, or maybe we even return back! It is so simple and so natural that we do not even notice it. Every power in this Universe will stand in your way because the powers of darkness and evil operate in the whole Universe (see Part 5). Satan has numerous means for disturbing you. Examples?
Satan’s tactics against the Purposes of God is to bring God’s people into indecisiveness, uncertainty, vagueness, then take away their courage and any spontaneous initiation and then keep them in that situation as long as possible by any available means. This way can Satan paralyze even those, which have an honest desire to go with the Lord and in their heart want the best for the Lord, but which to this time have not made that most important decision – give their life to the Lord and begin to move in His direction. “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold not hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm (undecided), and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee our of My mouth.” (Rev 3:15-17). If God will spue any believers out of His mouth, you may be sure that they missed God’s Purpose and only God knows where they will end up. To be lukewarm means to be undecided, neither here, nor there, neither to the left, nor to the right, neither forward, nor backward. We have made no definite decisions, not even those, which we know in ourselves we should have done and that our destiny depends on those decisions. We are in the position of paralysis and Satan will keep us there as long as we will allow him because it is not easy to get out of such a position. We have to literally “flip out” and say in ourselves “to hell with these things – I go to the Lord even if there were an earthquake! Period. And I will not go away until He shows me His Grace by coming to me. Because it is not His obligation to come to me and listen to me and even answer me – it is His Grace! All my Salvation is His Grace and not His obligation” (Eph. 2:8). God owes us NOTHING, He only gave us precious promises, for example, when we draw nigh to Him, He will draw nigh to us (Jam. 4:8), which also means, that the initiative should be on our side and not on His! He does not need Salvation, we need it!
A brief but important conclusion to this Part can be found in Israel of the Old Testament after their deliverance from Egypt. Because of their unbelief, indecisiveness, uncertainty and lukewarmness, all from Israel older than 20 years were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years until they dropped dead to the ground. After their escape from Egypt (from power of Satan), they could have entered the Promised Land in about 9-11 days, but they never entered in. We have also escaped from the power of Satan and are walking in the spiritual wildernessof this world, some of us few years, some others 20-30-40 years. Shall we also enter our Promised Land – the Kingdom of Heaven – or shall we also drop dead in this wilderness and will never enter the Kingdom? This does not depend on the Lord, this explicitly depends on us! If we do not believe the Light, which the Lord is giving us, or even if we believe but then we are indecisive what to do with the Light, if we will not make any definite decisions in our heart, then we will be as Israel, which was also lukewarm. The 40 years’ history of their journey in the wilderness was a life of unbelief, indecisiveness, uncertainty, unstableness, perpetual murmuring, complaining, dissatisfaction and perpetual variableness. The Christian, who cannot discern his spirit from his soul and thus his situation on this field is like unto Israel in the wilderness.
This indecisiveness can be compared to a man who ate some poison and is hospitalized. Doctor prescribed him a medicine and the nurse brought it in a small glass bottle, put it on his bedside table and gave him instructions how to use it. The man does not have to take the bottle and throw it to the ground in order that he may die. He will die even when he will ignore the bottle! And it will be just a question of a short time. If, therefore, we remain where we are and ignore what alone can help us, we will end up in a cemetery! And it will also be just a question of a short time.
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To be continued next week
brother Hanola
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