I received an email back from my friend after sending him the lesson “The Fork in the Road” sharing how he was feeling. He wrote, “Yes, I am with you and I am wandering over the fork, not sure about which way I need to choose to go ahead! Whether material satisfaction or spiritual satisfaction, very confusing now! I need your assistance to show me, to lead me as my mentor.”
I felt a heavy burden to pray this morning for my friend and then after breakfast I checked my emails and found his reply. More prayer was needed before I could write this lesson. What was on the Lord’s heart? What words did he have for me that my friend needed to hear that would be used by the Holy Spirit to edge him further toward spiritual birth? Would you like to join me in this process of writing these lessons with your prayers?
What follows is the lesson I will send to my friend.
[Name], thank you for sharing your heart with me. Many people struggle at this point. It is like a pregnant woman who has just started birth pangs. For some woman the baby comes quickly, but for others it can be long and hard labor. So it is making a decision for Jesus Christ because it involves a birth. In a previous lesson we saw in John 17:2 that God the Father gives as a gift to his Son those who will believe. To those the Son receives, he will give eternal life to. There are at least three things that happen simultaneously at this point. Eternal life is given, the person believes in his heart, and the Father causes the person to be born spiritually resulting in a new creation being formed within you. The fork in the pathway is not a decision of just the mind, it is a decision that compels you from deep within where that new creature is about to be born. Many people make a decision during the emotion of the moment, but it is only a false decision because the Father didn’t cause the birth to happen and after a while the person realizes that nothing really changed. Your struggle may intensify before you know its time, but you will know.
I am going to ask you to do something that I have asked others in your condition to do. Some were willing with positive results, but others found it to be an impossible request and eventually they requested no further conversation about spiritual matters. When a person reaches the point where you are I ask them to ask the Lord to reveal to them, in some way, that this is real. I find that if a person can’t humble themselves to ask God a question then they will not be ready and will be unwilling to ask forgiveness for their sin and to surrender to his authority over their lives. This is not just about information. This is about a person. Based on information you can choose a religion, but you will still be dead in your sin. It is not just information about God in the person of Jesus Christ. It is coming to the point of knowing him as a person that is not only your best friend but also Lord of your life.
Many people make a decision and believe they are truly a Christian, but they are not. Jesus makes this clear in Matthew 7:21 - 23. Unfortunately these people end up going through the wide gate that leads to destruction. The only ones that can go through the narrow gate are the ones in which spiritual birth produced the eternal creature which lives within.
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