Think Before You "Accept" Jesus!

by Mary Wilkey
(Ohio, USA)

When you came to Christianity, did you merely "accept" Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?

How arrogant!

I have long thought this, and recently I heard a well known Bible teacher expound on this very same thought.

What a newcomer to Christ should do is to first repent (change the character of his mind and do a complete about-face) and then ask our dear Lord to accept him—not the other way around!

Our role is to go to our Lord humbly, realize the horrendous sacrifice He made to save us from our sins, and then sincerely repent—which involves not only being sorry for all of the sins that we are aware of and those that we aren't—but a change of mind and a resolve that we wish to change. We don't accept Him . . . He accepts us! Romans 12:1

When we are leading someone to Christ, we should be absolutely sure that that person is ready to repent and that s/he is ready and willing to allow the Holy Spirit to change the lifestyle s/he is leading to conform to the ways of our Lord. Romans 12:2 If the willingness to yield and change is not there, then if that "convert" is baptized, s/he will go down a dry sinner and come up a wet one.

In other words, we do not fit Him into our lifestyle, we make following Him our lifestyle and fit everything else that conforms to His Word into our new relationship with the Lord.

We need to get away from this totally erroneous idea that we are the ones doing the accepting. Duh! He has saved us from eternal damnation, and we have to decide whether we are going to accept Him?

Let's get real here and start thanking God that He was willing to redeem us at all, since it was the human race that separated itself from God in the first place, not He from us! He gifted us with free will, and we made the wrong choice because of lust of the flesh and eyes and pride of life. 1 John 2:16

Now, I know that you are probably saying to yourself, "But I didn't do that personally," and I understand that. But, as a card-carrying member of the human race, we carry the same DNA (divine natural attributes) as did our forefathers, all the way back to Adam.

And because of that fact, not only are we partakers of the blessings, but the negative junk as well.

It's all that negative junk that we will need to eliminate from our new-found life in Jesus. If we are sincere about repenting, most of it will fall away of its own accord. The Lord will see to that.

But if we do have any "sacred cows" that we override the Spirit with and insist on holding onto, we're just going to have to come to terms with that and work toward putting them on the altar, so to speak.

Whatever we bind—claim—appropriate—cherish—possess—own—keep—tend—care for—nurture on earth will be so in heaven and whatever we loose—let go of—release—set free—do not care for or cherish—have no desire to own or possess—has no appeal or attraction on earth will be so in heaven. Matthew 16:19; 18:18; John 20:23

Does anyone have any further thoughts or comments on this issue? Better yet, can anyone suggest how to spread these obviously ignored precepts within the church body?