How to have a Life-changing Encounter with the Living God

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(Feb. 3, 2022) — To have a life-changing encounter with the Living God is as simple as ABC (though it may not be easy). No special ceremonies, formulas or professionals are required. You don’t have to learn anything, understand everything, or clean up your act. All that comes later, as needed. Start with just you – as you are – and God as He is. If you have any questions, give me a shout. If you go through with this, please let me know.

ADMIT that God is right and you are wrong – unconditionally – about everything. We are alienated from God – and it is not His fault. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way”- Isaiah 53:6. “There is none righteous, no not one.” Psalm 14:1. We have left God out of our lives – or shut Him out. Even in our goodness we don’t want a real God to rule over us – we want to be our own gods. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23.
BELIEVE that Jesus is God’s son and that He paid for your sin. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (II Corinthians 5:19) by His death on the cross. Faith is not “believing something that ain’t so” (Mark Twain), it is accepting (and acting on) the evidence of something we cannot see – or perhaps fully understand. There is plenty of evidence that God is, that He has revealed himself in the Bible, and that He raised Jesus from the dead – after He had made the claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me.” We choose not to believe it, or to ignore the whole question, but that doesn’t change the realities. It is not the lack of evidence that bothers us, but the consequences of accepting the evidence. See step #1.
CALL on the Lord to save you. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:13. Revelation 3:20: “[The risen Jesus speaking:] Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with him and he with Me.” You can’t do it yourself. You wouldn’t be interested unless He were calling you. He has done everything necessary to reconcile you to God. He leaves it to you only to open the door and receive Him. Receive Him, won’t you?

Sample prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I have done things my way and not yours. I have left you out of my life. I believe that you sent your Son to live a perfect human life, die for my sins, and be raised from the dead to reconcile me to you. Please forgive me, come into my life, and change me. Set me free from the things that separate me from you. Be my Savior and Lord. Thank you. Amen.”

What will happen? God deals differently with each person, but this is what the New Testament says: “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun. And all this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ.” II Corinthians 5:17-18. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born . . . of God.” John 1:12-13. Then get connected with a good church and the rest will follow.

A website that does the same thing for those who already believe that the New Testament is the Word of God: http://www.gotquestions.org/Romans-road-salvation.html. Also recommended: http://www.greatcom.org/laws/english, it works!