What is Salvation?

Read 2 Corinthians 5:11-21  

The question of “Why am I here?” has haunted mankind since after the Garden of Eden. What is my purpose? Who am I? People have tried to explain this many different ways, but there is only one person who can answer this cry satisfactorily – God.

We are created by God. We are created for a purpose, created by design, created because He loved and loves us (Genesis 1:26-27; 2:20-24). He made us in His image – which means we were created to have an eternal soul, the ability to choose, a consciousness of self, and a consciousness of God. We are the only creature on this earth with the ability to conceptualize ideas. But being made in His image also means He intended us to be His representatives in other parts of His creation. Adam and Eve were given responsibility for the garden, and later their descendants were given responsibility for the earth.

When Adam sinned it caused all of us to be born with the same defect. We are born spiritually dead. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s commands. This resulted, as God had promised it would, in their deaths. The immediate death Adam and Eve suffered was spiritual death, and ultimately it meant physical death. This dead spirit would be passed on to their offspring. Every human being born since has been born with the same dead spirit inside.

When we accepted Jesus as our Savior, He gave us a new, living spirit. Since God is Spirit (John 4:24), it is man’s spirit that is able to interact with Him. With a dead spirit we cannot interact with Him, obey Him, trust Him, or in any way please Him. So when we are born again, with the ability to love God, it is because He made our spirit alive again.

He decided to provide a way for us to come back to Him. He provided a way we could choose to become His and with this choice He gives our spirit eternal life (the Bible calls it salvation). With our new, living spirit we are able to talk to Him and obey Him.

There is only one way we can come to God. It is His way. It is a way which was completed without any action or effort from us. We cannot contribute a single thing to it. The Way is Jesus, God’s Son, by the death He died for us, and it is sealed – secured – by Jesus’ resurrection from death.

How can we gain this salvation? The Bible shows us the way.

*We must realize we are sinners – Romans 3:23

*We must acknowledge that all we deserve, or will ever deserve, is death – Romans 6:23

*We must believe in Jesus and confess (acknowledge) Him as Lord – Romans 10:9-10

*Accept His gift by faith – Ephesians 2:8

*We must choose to serve Him – Joshua 24:15

Understanding End Times Prophecy

Most of us want to know what lies ahead of us, what the future will hold, and how we can truly prepare for it. God designed us to want this – the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3:11 – “…He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

He wants us to yearn for and seek these things through Himself rather than trying to find them through other ways – and the numbers of people who seek such information from fortune-tellers or other ways are pursuing this information from sources which cannot know God’s Truth but are eager to do evil toward the seeker. God warns us, in such places as Deuteronomy 18:9-14, against seeking information from such people. There is judgment coming to those who practice these things as well as to those who hire such people to advise them.

Then why would God place this desire in our hearts? He did so to make us turn to Him for the answers. And yet, He will not tell us everything because He has a purpose for this time of our lives here on earth – to teach us to walk by faith in Him (Hebrews 11:6). If we could know all that the future holds for us, we would never need to learn to walk by faith.

From the very beginning of creation, people have wanted to be independent. God created us to have some choices, so we could choose to love Him. He did not create us to be pets or robots. Remember, the very first temptation for the first people God created, Adam and Eve, was that of “being like gods, knowing good and evil.” This desire, being like God, was the very first sin, the sin of Lucifer. But it was not the “being like God” which was the sin; it was the fact that we would attempt to do so on our own which made it sin. In 1 John 3:2 we read “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.”

What an amazing promise! God wants us to be like Him! But this cannot happen by our own efforts; we must allow Him to make us like Himself. This is where trust comes in; we must learn to trust Him to do something in us that we cannot completely understand.

Therefore, in this study of End Times Prophecy, we will learn how to understand the things God has already revealed to us who trust Him. He will not reveal this to anyone who is not His child, nor will He give understanding to us if we simply want to use the information for our own purposes. He wants us to learn to see His way rather than our own way.

Prayer: Father, teach us to know Your way, give us a spirit of trust in You as we have never before trusted. Open up Your Word to us and help us to understand as the days continue to get shorter. Come quickly Lord Jesus we pray, in Your name, Amen. 

Devotion taken from Global Media Outreach 

My God, In You I Trust - Psalm 25:1-2

To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in You I trust; let me not be put to shame.

Psalm 25:1-2

O Lord, You who rule, Lord of heaven and earth, I call You Lord, though I am not worthy to be called Your servant for from my youth I did not serve You. But I served Your enemy, the devil. Him I served diligently.

Nevertheless, I do not doubt Your grace for I find in the word of Your truth that You are a bountiful, rich Lord to all those who call upon You. Therefore, I call unto You. O Lord hear me, hear me, O Lord! With full confidence and assurance, I lift up, not my head or my hands as the hypocrites do in the temples, but my soul. I lifted up my heart, not to Abraham, for he never knew us, nor to Israel, for he never had knowledge of us, but just to You, for You are our Lord and Father. You are our Redeemer, this is Your name from days of old.

Therefore it is, dear Lord, that I trust in You, for I truly know You are a faithful God over all who trust in You. If I am in darkness, You are my light. If I am in prison, You are with me. If I am forsaken, You are my comfort. If I am in death, You are my life. If they curse me, You bless. If they grieve me, You comfort. If they will kill me, You will raise me up. And if I walk in the dark valley, You will ever be with me. It is right, O Lord, that I lift up my grieved and miserable soul to You, trust in Your promise, and am not ashamed.

Prayers from Rev. Simon, a persecuted Christian 

A Cry in Troubled Times - Psalm 25

Sometimes our lives as believers can be very difficult. David, before he became king of Israel, found it so when he was being hunted by King Saul, his own father-in-law. Saul, out of jealousy and hatred, wanted to kill David. So David escaped with the help of his wife (read the story in 1 Samuel 18-24) and lived in fear for his life for the next few years. The Apostle Paul suffered many things as well – and his list can be read in 2 Corinthians 11:25-27.

In our lifetime we see people facing these same kinds of issues today – people who are being hunted for no other reason than that they believe in Jesus Christ. It is hard to face such persecution. That is when we turn to Scripture to find both advice and comfort.

Other Christians in past years have done the same, and we can learn from their testimonies too. One such instance is this study, written by a minister whose people were being killed for their faith in Jesus. Rev. Simon used the words of David, as they are written in Psalm 25, to talk with God about his own pain and fears.

We pray these lessons will be an encouragement to you as you turn to God in the same way Rev. Simon did. As you hear the heart of this man weeping for his friends who were dying, possibly facing the same kind of treatment if those who sought his life would successfully find him, please also hear the peace and hope in his heart from knowing God was still in control. Please read and hear his confidence that God was very near to those who were being killed. Such hope and peace gives us, as it did Rev. Simon, the ability to praise God even in the face of death (see Matthew 5:10-12).

Psalm 25 Of David.

1 In you, Lord my God,

    I put my trust.

2 I trust in you;

    do not let me be put to shame,

    nor let my enemies triumph over me.

3 No one who hopes in you

    will ever be put to shame,

but shame will come on those

    who are treacherous without cause.

4 Show me your ways, Lord,

    teach me your paths.

5 Guide me in your truth and teach me,

    for you are God my Savior,

    and my hope is in you all day long.

6 Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love,

    for they are from of old.

7 Do not remember the sins of my youth

    and my rebellious ways;

according to your love remember me,

    for you, Lord, are good.

8 Good and upright is the Lord;

    therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.

9 He guides the humble in what is right

    and teaches them his way.

10 All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful

    toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.

11 For the sake of your name, Lord,

    forgive my iniquity, though it is great.

12 Who, then, are those who fear the Lord?

    He will instruct them in the ways they should choose.

13 They will spend their days in prosperity,

    and their descendants will inherit the land.

14 The Lord confides in those who fear him;

    he makes his covenant known to them.

15 My eyes are ever on the Lord,

    for only he will release my feet from the snare.

16 Turn to me and be gracious to me,

    for I am lonely and afflicted.

17 Relieve the troubles of my heart

    and free me from my anguish.

18 Look on my affliction and my distress

    and take away all my sins.

19 See how numerous are my enemies

    and how fiercely they hate me!

20 Guard my life and rescue me;

    do not let me be put to shame,

    for I take refuge in you.

21 May integrity and uprightness protect me,

    because my hope, Lord, is in you.

22 Deliver Israel, O God,

    from all their troubles!

Prayers for Boldness - Acts 4:23-31

These are prayers from the Bible to help us see the God of all seasons!

On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. 

“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:

“ ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one.

Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of Godl boldly.