2Cor.5.17 - What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun! [NLT]
I grew up as a church boy, born into a Christian home and raise in a Pentecostal, Bible believing church. My church had sound doctrines, sound teachers, anointed Ministers of God, large congregation and a very big auditorium for meetings and services, yet I wasn't saved.
There is a thin line between Church and attendance and Salvation, that was what I didn't know. I thought that was all about Jesus. I need knew there was more and yet more about Him. You too need to realise this!
"JESUS is a well. The more you draw or dig, the deeper it becomes. Inexhaustible!"
Children Sunday school was very awesome. We were taught wonderful Bible stories and characters, especially the story of the defeat of Goliath, the Philistine giant by little David. I also did a lot of Bible memorizing and recitation competitions.
I remember vividly a time I represented a church group in a contest, I won and was rewarded with money. All these were just services that didn't involve my body, so it wasn't a reasonable service.
Rom.12.1 - And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice--the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? [NKJV]
Scriptures call the submission of our bodies, a living sacrifice, as the only reasonable service we can offer God since our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Your work in church is called a normal service.
I kept on playing church for ten years. I was in 'church' but not part of the Church and not the 'Church' itself. Only Believers that are saved and sanctified are the church Christ talked about.
"My parents took me to church and left me in church to find God myself".
The Eleventh year, I encountered Christ for myself. And this is an experience I will never recover from. It was not in a Believers meeting, neither was it an altar call. It was a personal encounter.
That day, I sat in my room and suddenly there was a change in the presence and aura in the room. Everything looked Divine. I could no longer relate with this Earth realm sufficiently like before. I knew a personality had walked in, though I couldn't see or touch Him but I knew there was an unusual presence.
I wept in my spirit. Oh How far I've been away from Jesus! I confessed my sins and told Jesus I was ready for something different from what I have been experiencing. And surely, He did give me a gift, Eternal Life.
Before now, I had come out on different occasions for altar calls but all the same, there were mere religious encounters. Religious people will never encounter God. They make dake the encounter, but the proof that they are fake is by the fruits that proceed them.
After my Salvation experience, everything about me changed. Life from my inside now reflected outside. I became changed, no longer violent or involved in Immoralities and till now, that Life still produces Rays, flashes and Beams of the good works of Christ!
You need to experience the newness of life too. If you have never had an experience in your walk with God, then now is the time. All you need to do is to call upon His loving name - Jesus Christ!
Acts.2.21 - And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.'
Confess and believe in your heart right now! Then He'd send you His Spirit.
1Thess.4.8 - Anyone who refuses to live by these rules is not disobeying human rules but is rejecting God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
Eph.1.13 - And now you also have heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago.