To Know That You Know…
To Know That You Know…
There is no greater question to be answered than:
… Sirs, what must I do to be saved? (Acts 16:30)
How you choose to answer that question will determine where you will spend eternity… in Heaven with God, or in Hell in eternal punishment of Hell‑fire.
How To Meet Jesus. What Must I Do To Be Saved?
⇒ Salvation is in Jesus alone. (Acts 4:12)
⇒ To be Saved is to be Born‑Again in your spirit by God the Holy Spirit (John 3:1-8)
⇒ You must submit yourself wholly to Jesus as your God and your Savior. (2 Peter 1:1)
⇒ All it takes is a honest 30-second prayer to God… Are you ready?
Are you Saved?
Here is a good measure on whether you are Saved and going to Heaven…
How is it that you can know that you know if you have ever actually been Saved and are in fact going to Heaven, what Jesus calls Born‑Again? Well let’s use a little story that God gave me to investigate this question…
The Knock at the Door…
Imagine that it’s Saturday morning and you are watching some brainless cartoons on TV to decompress from the hectic week. Suddenly there is a knock at the front door. Knock, knock, knock… Oh crap, you mumble quietly under your breath. Very stealthily you creep to the window and slightly draw back the edge of the window curtain. You don’t want to get caught because everyone knows who the early Saturday morning unsolicited visit generally comes from! (hint: The Mormons!). But to your shock it is not that kind of visitor! You go to the peep‑hole in the front door to get a second look. No this can’t be you tell yourself! You then open the door just so slightly, and sure enough it’s the President of the United States standing at your front door! “Mr. President!”, you barely manage to sputter out as you swing your door open.
The President says hello and apologizes for showing up unannounced. The President calls you by name and says that his presidency has run into a bit of a problem because some of the people do not think that he fully appreciates the struggles of the common man. His advisors, he says, tell him that he should move in with an average family and get acquainted with the hardships of the common man… and I have chosen you!, the President says. In your mind you are thinking “Wow! the President living at my house!”. But out loud you say that, it would be an honor Mr. President.
The next Monday the President and his wife move into your back bedroom with his advisors, staff, and other dignitaries filing in and out at all hours. On Tuesday you tell the President that on Friday nights you have your buddies over and play poker, a tradition that you have continued since high school. You inquire if you could still keep your tradition given this change of circumstance.
The President replies that of course, and if you were willing, he would love to also sit in and play. You tell the President that that would be great! Your friends are excited to not only meet the President, but to play poker with him every Friday night! Over the next several years the President faithfully attends the poker games when he is not out of town on official business. It is great to have the President inquire of you on every major domestic policy decision that he has on his agenda. He really listens and takes every word to heart.
At the end of his second‑term the President has been “term‑limited out” and cannot run again. He shakes your hand and gives you a buddy‑hug and thanks you for your service to him and to your Country. “Wow!”, you say… which takes you back to the same expression where it all started.
Now here is the question: Could it ever be possible… as you and your buddies continue playing poker every Friday night, that one of your buddies would begin to reminisce about how you all played poker with the President of the United States; Would it be possible that you could not remember when the President knocked on your front door and you invited him in to live in your house?
Of course not! Not a chance!
Well here is the ultimate point: If you could never forget the moment that the President of the United States knocked on your door and you invited him to move into your house… then how could you ever forget the moment that God Himself knocked on the door of your heart and you invited the God of the Universe to move into your heart?!
It would be absolutely impossible to forget that God had moved into your heart. Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”. (Revelation 3:20)
Now if you cannot remember the exact moment that you asked God to move into your heart and you accepted Jesus as your God and Savior, then you are not a Born‑Again Christian! (I am not talking about you remembering the exact time of the day, or month, or year, but the that exact moment somewhere in your past.) Without this moment of surrender, you are not headed to Heaven, but tragically you are headed for eternal damnation in the flames of Hell.
The Bible is clear that there is only one way to become a Christian.
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)
How Do I Know that I know that I’m Saved?
The Man On the Shore:
I liken the deciding moment which leads to Salvation to a man being swept down a raging river in his canoe towards certain doom of a waterfall. The man can hear the coming waterfall and certain death awaiting him several hundred feet below his viewable horizon, and being thrown onto the sharp jagged rocks below. The man’s boat is loaded down with every one of the man’s accumulated sins, all of which he is holding onto tightly with a death‑grip. There is a second Man standing on the shore with a rope capable of saving him from eminent death. The man in the canoe screams out to the Man on the shore, “please save me from my certain death!”. The Man on the shore throws the rope which lands across the bow of the little canoe. The Man on the shore calls out, “I will be your God and your Savior!”. The man in the boat looks quite puzzled; this is not the deal which he expected and calls back, “I just want a savior”. The Man on the shore calls back, “your grip will not hold unless you abandon all of your sins and throw yourself overboard and wholly trust in Me to Save you. Now let go of your sins, grab hold of the rope, and jump out of your boat… and I will pull you to safety”.
The man in the canoe calls back, “No, I just want to be saved, but I want no commitment beyond that”. The Man on the shore desperately calls back to the man in the canoe headed ever closer to certain death, “My Father has set me here to Save you, but because of the terrible price which it cost Me to be positioned here, My Father demands that you leave all behind, or you cannot be Saved”.
Hearing this the man in the canoe turns his head away and mutters to himself, “I just wanted to be rescued, but I will not leave all of my life’s acquired sins behind”. The man in the canoe drops his head and blocked out the pleading cries of the Savior from the shore. The man in the canoe refused to give up his boatload of accumulated sins, and determined that he would hold onto them until the very end, which was fast approaching. The man was neither saved nor rescued. This is a tragic allegory, but one that is repeated millions of times every day! People want to be saved, but not submitted to God. Again, with God you are either all‑in… or all out!
This is the same decision that we must all face. We have a choice between our sins… and God. Too many people want to be saved from the eminent doom of Hell, but still want to cling to the Evil of their sins. Sin cannot enter Heaven… into the very presence of God the Father. It’s simply… impossible. Hell is full of those who loved their sin, rather than God. Salvation is a package deal. You must accept Jesus Christ as your God and your Savior. To be Born‑Again you must first accept Jesus as God, you “must Believe that he [Jesus] is [God]”.
But without faith it is impossible to please him [God]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he [Jesus] is [God], and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6).
In return you receive a package deal from God receiving God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. One God in Three Persons. It’s a great deal, but there is a cost… you must wholly surrender your life and sins to Jesus as your God!
The commitment to Jesus takes less than 30 seconds…
If you have not yet accepted Jesus as your God and Savior, please consider doing so now. This is the Salvation which Jesus paid the ultimate price for on the Cross to buy you back from the Devil, Hell, and your sin. The prayer takes less than 30 seconds. Now is the moment to accept Jesus as your God and Savior and put your heart on the Way to Heaven! Again, this commitment takes less than 30 seconds. All that is required is that you Believe that Jesus is God, you are a sinner in need of a Savior, Jesus died for your sins, and that Jesus raised Himself from the dead three days later.
Then simply pray and tell Jesus:
Jesus, I wholly surrender my life to You as my God and Savior. Jesus, I am a sinner. I surrender all of my sins to you Jesus and ask You for Your Forgiveness of all my sins. I accept Your Salvation and thank You for Dying on the Cross to Save me. In Jesus name, Amen!
That’s it. If you’ve done that and mean that with all your heart … Congratulations! You are now a Christian, and as such, a Born‑Again child of God!
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If you have made the decision to accept Jesus as your God and Savior and have become a Born‑Again Christian, we would love to hear from you about your experience!