If you ARE a Christian, you need not have that fear, or any of those fears. You will be snatched away, possibly in your very sleep, before it even begins. But you have to be a true Christian, not just someone who says he is. And it won't be your opinion that matters - it'll be His.
Over the past two days, we've gone over the very basic requirements of being a Christian. If you're doing these, you should be safely on board the mother ship when Christ comes to get us in the next couple of years. (I've posted the reasons I believe that He's coming very soon. I may be wrong about the timing, for Christ told us point blank “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." (Matthew 24:36), but I'm sure it's coming sooner rather than later.) Here are those seven basic needs of Christians:
ONCE:
1) Confess as a sinner and accept the salvation and Lordship of Jesus Christ. (Every single human is imperfect. God is perfect, and cannot tolerate imperfection - unpunished sin - in Heaven, for He is a God of Justice as well as a God of Love. In order to be accepted into Heaven, our punishment must be paid for (Justice), but Jesus Christ came to earth and lived a perfect life in order to pay the penance for OUR sins (Love). All God asks is that we accept His payment on our behalf, and follow His example in order to work towards perfection ourselves.
2) Be baptized in water and the Holy Spirit. (The water baptism is symbolic of our rebirth with Christ - we descend into the water as we would be buried in the ground, and rise up as Christ was resurrected. The Holy Spirit comes and resides within us, not necessarily at the same time - usually earlier - to be our "on board navigation system" as we learn to follow the Word of God.)
SEASONALLY:
3) Accept communion with the body of Christ. (Jesus asked us to eat the bread as representative of His Body, and drink the fruit of the vine as representative of His Blood. Whether your church does this once a year, once a season, once a month or once a week, participate, with a vigilant heart, as Christ asked of us.)
WEEKLY:
4) Attend church and bible study, and be a part of that church. (You need a cohort of Christians to have your back, to help you understand God's Word, to allow you to help others, and a wide variety of reasons.)
DAILY:
5) Pray to God through Christ. (This is how you speak to the Lord. Important aspects of prayer include praising the Creator Who Created you and everything else in the world; thanking Him for His blessings; asking God for His grace and blessing - and don't afraid to be specific, because God knows everything you could possibly tell Him! - and thank Jesus for allowing you to come to the throne of the King of the Universe with your requests.)
6) Read the Bible. (This is how the Lord speaks to you! The Bible is the literal Word of God, and He still speaks to us through His Scripture even today. We need to be in the Word of God every single day.)
7) Share the Gospel every day with someone. (I've testified that the only means of sharing that I can guarantee I do every day is through this Act II Ministries blog. I wish I could tell you that I share the Gospel with someone in my world - a friend, a family member, a colleague, a student - every single day, but I don't. That's something I need to continue improving in my life.)
☀
PICTURE A NEWBORN BABY.
How do they tell you something's wrong? They cry.
What might they be crying about? There are generally only a few things that are ever wrong with a newborn child (the English language dictates I talk about a boy):
***He's hungry.
***He's sleepy.
***He's in pain.
***He's poopy.
So, just like a newborn child, we newborn Christians should only have a few possible things wrong with us as Christians: we're hungry, we're sleepy, we're in pain, or (yes), we're poopy! Let's consider each of these possibilities.
If you're hungry as a Christian, that would mean that you're hungering for what the Father, Son, and/or Spirit can give you - you hunger for His Word, for His love, for His guidance. What do we need when we're hungry? We need to be fed - fed by the Word of God. We need to read the Bible. We need to hear the Word of God. We need to pray to God for His guidance and help. We Need God. Whenever you hunger as a Christian, turn to the Word of God and dig in. If you're not sure where, start in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. (Start with Matthew first, and then John second. The order's not critical - that's just a suggestions.)
If you're sleepy as a Christian, that's the equivalent of saying you need rest. Usually, a Christian needs rest from the stresses of the world, from the sin-crazed culture which impedes on us from all directions. Where do we get that rest? Within the love of Christ. Within the Words of the Bible. Start with the New Testament, and rest within the Words of God. Within those Words, you will find a centering in His love. When you reach the place where God's way is the right way, you'll find that centering comes to you and fills you with His Love, giving you His Rest.
If you're in pain as a Christian, you most likely are filled with guilt from your sins, or perhaps are living with the consequences of sins, either yours or others close to you. How do you deal with that pain? You learn the Lord's Ways. You read the Bible to learn the Lord's Ways. And if you read the Gospels, you discover that your sins are forgiven through the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Jesus paid the price for those sins, whether you committed them or someone else did. The Lord is the ultimate healer, and "His pain is our gain", so to speak. He paid the price of our stresses and our guilts and our pains.
If you're "poopy"?
We're going to talk about that next time, because it's something we haven't really addressed yet - an eighth thing that's required of Christians, and my suspicion is that more "Christian-In-Name-Only"s will be kept out of Heaven because they fail to do this eighth thing than fail to do any of the seven I've already mentioned... combined. In the meantime, work on these first seven between now and tomorrow, and we'll finish this series when next we meet.
In the meantime, Be Blessed! -gps
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