In my first article I explained how it is not us that decides whether or not we are to be called and saved, but the Father God's decision, His will and His timing alone. We just respond to His call and then begin to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is now with us through The Holy Spirit as and when we need Him but the Holy Spirit is not with us yet on a permanent basis. This does not happen until Baptism. We are now His disciples and we learn from Him through His Word - The Holy Scriptures. We should also be taught by a Spirit gifted teacher if we can find one. 1 Cor 12:28 "And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments (a bad translation - overseers or guides, not governments), diversities of tongues." (Brackets mine)

OK, that's all very fine I hear you say, but what else do we do? Nothing is the answer to that, and from here on in we don't do anything, we only do what The Lord enables us to do and leads us to do. If we're doing it, if we're the ones initiating and doing the doing, then we have no need of Jesus Christ and we can rightly boast in ourselves. All this initiating and doing would therefore be of us and of our own strength. As unsaved people, before our calling, we always did things under our own strength, and we literally believed in ourselves. How often do we hear sportsmen or women refer to their self belief in order to drive themselves on to better performances and greater success? If we continue living in the same manner, with the same mindset, drive and ambition, but now, as saved people, what's the difference between us and those worldly sports people, what has changed - nothing!? In our new lives as new people our walk with God is now totally enabled by Jesus Christ and we can't do anything of our own mental and physical strength. If we do, it will come to nothing - it will fail - period. Everything we do now, and anything we achieve now is down to the Lord's enabling, His strength, His blessings and with the end results being to His glory and His glory alone - not ours.

Right, what's next? After our calling, repentance is next. Now enter: The beginnings of a new creation, a new man or new woman; the new reality of Spiritual awareness and primarily a Spiritual awareness of our called condition. We are now on the way to becoming a new person residing in an old body of death, a body that is literally dying, and will die, never to be seen again. In the first Resurrection we will receive new Spiritual bodies; please read 1 Cor 15:34-58 and I will deal with the Truth of the two resurrections, exposing the 'rapture' lie in the process, in a future article, so watch this space.

After we are called we are hit by two realities, the first is the reality of the fact that the Father God and Jesus Christ exist; a new Spiritual awareness and second, the reality of our carnal sinful nature; another new awareness - our sinful bodies. Before our calling we are not even aware of God's existence and we're certainly not aware of our sinful nature and bodies of sin, nor are we conscious of the fact that it is an intrinsic part of us, so repentance of our own will and strength is impossible - completely and utterly impossible. As unsaved beings we can, and many of us do, frequently feel guilty, sorrowful and remorseful for things we have done in the past but these sensations are only fleeting human feelings or human sorrows and we have to bury them in our sub-conscious in order to cope, survive and in some cases, remain sane. Our guilt over these past events will inevitably, and often do, come back to haunt us and will continue to do so until we are made aware of Godly forgiveness. This realisation and the lifting of this burden through forgiveness cannot occur until we are called by The Father to His Son - en route to salvation. To repent means to "think differently", from the Greek word metanoeo, and in order for us to think differently we must be empowered to do so if salvation or our being saved is to be real and Spiritually enabled. If one microcosm of our effort is involved in this process then we can boast and pat ourselves on the back. Why is it we need to think differently and in what way do we to think differently? A better question would be how do we think differently? As I have already said, we now think differently because we have been given, as a free gift, the Godly desire to think differently. We also need to think differently because we are now no longer God's enemies and we are on the way to Baptism and to becoming a son or a daughter of God and a brother or sister of Jesus Christ - literally born from above and born of God. We could not become a member of God's Family without a significant change in the way we think. God's Law is now being written on our hearts - internalised, so for the first time in our lives we now have a God given desire to do God's will instead of Satan's will. This new desire is the crucial characteristic of our now "thinking differently" - the crucial attribute and substance of repentance. Initially there may not be any outward sign of any change in us at all, but inwardly the change in thinking that has and is taking place is miraculous!

This new way of thinking immediately gives us other desires as well: the need and desire for forgiveness is heightened, a desire to confess our sins to God for the first and only time (see my article on repetitive confession of sins); a desire to get baptised, receive the Holy Spirit and be Born Again. Once we are Born Again we are saved - period. From then on the new man or new woman will be aware of a fight, an internal war within our minds and with the internal lusts of our bodies of sin. This war will continue for the rest of our physical lives and it will be with us until we die. Ah, but what about the mainstream 'Christian' mantras of 'struggling with sin' and 'overcoming sin' I hear you say? Ah yes, a very good question and I will deal with that next time, so don't go away.

Now, as new disciples who have progressed to becoming Spiritual babes after being baptised, (no longer disciples) what I will introduce here is a most important feature of salvation, and a feature that many Christians overlook and/or do not understand. I will now remind you of Samuel's remark when he answered The Lord's call: "Here am I". This remark is as remarkable for what it doesn't say as for what it does say. What it doesn't say openly and yet does say is this: "Here am I Lord just as I am with all my faults, sins, weaknesses, wretchedness and evil rebellious nature!!" Samuel was just another human being like you and I and The Lord called him as he was with all his human frailties. It was the same for Jeremiah and all the prophets. The Lord knew all about Samuel's sins, faults and weaknesses just as He knows all about ours and yet He still called Samuel to be His prophet and likewise He calls us too to be His sons and daughters with all our sins, faults, character flaws and weaknesses.

So what does all this mean? Quite simply it means He accepts us as we are; 'warts and all', as the expression goes. Why does He accept us 'warts and all'? Quite plainly, because He loves us, and that's why we need to get this basic awesome Truth through our heads!? The issue here is this, are the 'warts and all' a permanent feature, do they remain with us for the rest of our lives, now we are new men and women? No, is the resounding answer to this question because 'warts and all' are all features of our bodies of death and sin which will eventually lessen as we grow in grace and ultimately completely when we die. How will they lessen? As we learn that these things have no power over us, we are now new Spiritual beings, new people living in our decaying dying bodies with all its 'warts and all'. Am I saying we are now two people? In a way, yes I am and there is Scriptural evidence to prove it too, so stay with it folks, I'll be back soon!

Don't forget you can always e-mail me at yes2faith@yahoo.co.uk if you want learn more in privacy.

Charles Crosby