The point is simply that we never know for sure when we are going to die. We can look at the odds

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I know nothing about Mr. Russert's spiritual life. I mean absolutely nothing at all. It is just that sitting here a few moments ago watching one of the many news shows reminiscing about Mr. Russert's life the thought came into my mind, "Wow, I wonder if anyone ever spoke to him about his need to repent and turn to God through Jesus Christ?"

It is certainly true that Mr. Russert may be saved and with God at this moment. The point is simply if you personally suspect that someone you are in contact with has not turned their life over to God and been saved by the price that Jesus Christ paid then the death of Mr. Russert is a reminder to you that today, not tomorrow, is the time when you need to speak to them about their absolute need to repent and turn their lives over to God.

One last time, as a reminder to you to not be embarrassed or ashamed of the gospel. Now is the time to talk with anyone and everyone that you suspect is not saved.

Number one from the sinning person's standpoint is that the odds against knowing you are going to die within the next few minutes are really very much against that possibility happening. I suspect that in the last five seconds of someone's

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I can see it now, "OHGODBYTHEWAYIREPENTOFMYSINSANDACCEPTJESUSCHRISTASMYPERSONALSAVIOR!" - smack.

On a more serious note repenting is in large part all about a change of heart toward sin and toward God and not playing the odds with your eternal destiny at stake.in other words, repenting is serious business and you are either sincere or playing games and only sincerity counts.

Some people think that if they just turn to God that he will be very happy with the change in their heart. On the surface that would seem at least like a possibility but it is only a possibility if you choose to ignore scripture. It is not sufficient to just turn to God. Instead it is of critical importance to repent and/then turn to God. It is extremely important to do both things and this should be virtually simultaneous decisions. It's not being "good enough" to touch God but rather understanding that God, through Jesus Christ, saves repentant sinners. The man in the Bible that called out, "God have mercy on me, a miserable sinner", is the one that is still saved today. Without the heart felt plea born out of a life suddenly repulsive to the acknowledged sinner there is no salvation.

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My not being a theologian or a scholar of the Greek language means that I will not be trying to fine tune the meaning of the word "repent", suffice it to say, for this brief post, that if you repent in this context it means that among other things you have recognized the critical importance of the necessity for you to stop doing things that are offensive to God and begin to do things that are pleasing to God.

In the end, you determine to live a new life style not just so that you can avoid going to hell someday but rather you make a major lifestyle change because you realize that your old lifestyle was just displeasing to God. To repent, again, means you change your actions and priorities not to avoid eternal damnation but instead the emphasis is on changing simply because you recognize that God is so wonderful and loving and kind that he really deserves better from you. But even this is not enough all by it's self for those that are legitimately concerned about their eternal destiny.

In addition to changing your life style so that you stop doing things that are offensive to God and begin doing things that are pleasing to God it is also a necessity that you seek to build a relationship with God. Otherwise you are nothing but a do-gooder who is just "on the wagon" for a while and naturally enough this change in lifestyle is likely to be either temporary or done with a heart that is still fundamentally evil.

In order to build that relationship with God you need to seek his forgiveness for the sins that you have already committed as well as the sins that you will commit in the future and the only way that He can forgive you is if you accept the death and resurrection of Christ on the cross as being the full payment for your sins.

Repent and turn to God? Yes, the emphasis here is to point out that simply turning to God is, according to Scripture, insufficient to gain you salvation. Most of the lost hypocrites in churches around the world have turned to God, so they say, but those who continue to live the same ifestyles outside of the forgiveness available through Jesus Christ are not saved and by definition are not Christians.

I’ll tell you would not think that’s good news: people who don’t understand that they are sinners and that their sin is enough

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Your job as a presenter of the Gospel is to show them convincingly that qualifying for eternal life with God is not a matter of being a good person but rather that even as a good person they have committed many sins in their life. You need to show them in a way that even they can see that they are indeed sinners and that one fact is enough to keep them out of heaven.

MOVE FROM GENERALITIES TO SPECIFICS

The easiest way for you to do this is to use the 10 Commandments. In fact, God tells us that the purpose of the law is so that people can see that they are sinners so doesn’t it make sense that we should still be using the law to show people that they are indeed sinners?

Familiarize yourself with two or three of the 10 Commandments and initiate your witnessing opportunities, giving people the opportunity to acknowledge that in light of what the 10 Commandments says that they are indeed sinners beyond any doubt and thus not worthy of spending eternity with God in heaven.

You are still going to share with them salvation by grace through faith. It is still all about faith in Jesus Christ and his atoning death on the cross. It’s simply that before someone can be saved they need to UNDERSTAND that they are eternally separated from God BY THEIR ACTUAL SINS and need to apologize to him. Once you and the Holy Spirit have gotten them to this point the Holy Spirit has a lot more to work with because you have shown the individual that they truly need to be saved and in such a way that they can accept that they are lost sinners.

YOU WILL SEE MANY MORE PEOPLE SAVED

When you take the few minutes necessary to demonstrate to someone in a way that they can relate to that although they are not axe murderers they are still sinners then you are not jumping ahead of the Holy Spirit and you’re much more likely to see people that you have witnessed to later come to be saved.

As always, it may not happen in your presence but you will know that you have done things in the proper manner and people are going to be saved as a direct result of your efforts.

If you believe the first paragraph above is a fair description of you than you need to ask yourself

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There are lots of opinions on this subject and the most prevailing opinion is that all good people go to heaven when they die. Maybe the big problem is defining what good actually means. Do we mean good compared to friends and neighbors and people that we see on the news? Or do we mean good compared to God in heaven? You see, God requires us to measure ourselves against him and not our neighbors.

In order to help us understand this concept one of the things that God did for mankind was to give us the 10 Commandments. By comparing our lives to the 10 Commandments and doing so objectively it's easy for us to realize that God is right and that we do not in any way compare to him.

All of us are guilty of having told lies in our life. Maybe we justify it by categorizing it as just a little white lie in order to spare someone's feelings but still, a lie is a lie is a lie.

Also it's probably true that all of us have stolen something along the way. It may have been something little or it may have been something of a lot of value but when you are really honest with yourself and understand that God truly has seen everything that you have done in your lifetime and has a photographic memory you know that you have been guilty of stealing one or more items in the course of your life.

This only covers two of the 10 Commandments and already you know that you are guilty of not measuring up to God. And he does hold you accountable for this.

God's desire for us is not for him to be seen as a harsh disciplinarian but rather to help us have a clear picture of ourselves and how we as individuals have drifted away from God. It is his desire that when we see the truth we come to our senses and begin to focus our lives and our attention on him. When we do this it will become obvious in our lives through changed priorities that we have started living lives that reflect an honest effort to live lives pleasing to God.

The only thing that remains then is to apologize to God for all the times that we have failed him in life and to ask his forgiveness. Along with his forgiveness however, the penalty for our failures, better known as our sins, still must be paid.

We do not have to go any further than the court of law to realize that if a captured bank robber sincerely apologizes to the judge for what he has done, the judge may forgive him because he detects the robber's sincerity but nevertheless the crime must be punished.

In the same way, when you go to God for forgiveness the punishment for your sins must still take place except that God, being the God of love, will accept the price that Jesus Christ paid on the cross through his death on the cross as more than adequate punishment for your sins.

All that you need to do then in order to be assured of spending eternity with God is to see yourself as God sees you and then respond appropriately.

If only through the 10 Commandments, God enables you to see that you are far from perfect. Compared to your friends and neighbors you may be a pretty good person but according to God's standard, which is the only one that counts, you have clear evidence that you are a convicted sinner.

God simply want you to see yourself for what you truly are and to turn back the focus of your life to him. To sincerely apologize to him for the many times that you have failed him through your actions and through your inattention to him and have enough faith to ask him to forgive you in the name of Jesus Christ to pay the debt for your sins.

And, God is so much the God of love that he will even give you enough faith to be saved.

Okay, I will assume that you answered yes to that question so my next question to you would be, are you familiar with the Ten Commandments and how many of them have you broken? Probably more than just a few.

For instance, you know that according to the 10 Commandments you’re never supposed to tell a lie but

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And, you know that you’re never supposed to steal anything. Now how many things have you stolen in your lifetime? I for one know that the first thing that I stole was in the first grade. Maybe even before then but that time in the first grade is the first time that I can recall.

I remember a friend and I sneaking around in the back of the classroom while the teacher was reading stories and we were stealing pencils from our classmates. I was already a thief.

Maybe you didn’t steal anything in elementary school but I’d bet that somewhere along the way you stole a pencil or a pen or a box of paper clips, or a case of corn or cash from the register? We know that if you’re a human being you’ve undoubtably stolen something along the way during your lifetime and violated the 10 Commandments again.

Let’s not go through all of the 10 Commandments but stop right here because we’ve probably already established in your mind that you are a lying thief. Am I right?

Let’s remember that the 10 Commandments are nonnegotiable and when God gave them to the Israelites to spread throughout the world he attached consequences to obedience or disobedience in context of the 10 Commandments. And, before you try to jump ahead and say something about this now being the Church age and the Ten Commandments don't count, let me remind you that Jesus said he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill the Law. The Ten Commandments do still count.

Back to the 10 Commandments in the book of Exodus, God said that he would bless those people that love him AND keep his commandments. I hope you caught the significance there. He said that we should love him and also keep his commandments. We have a responsibility for both of them. To love and to obey.

He went on to say that those people who do not keep the 10 Commandments faithfully demonstrate that they hate him. He didn’t say that those people were just human beings, or fallible human beings, or just ordinary people. No, he said those people that do not keep his commandments actually hate him. I’m pretty sure that all translators do translate that phrase using the word hate.

Now really, this is not some kind of deep theology. This is just plain, even contemporary, common sense that your actions speak louder than your words. If you say that you love someone but you treat them with contempt can you honestly say that you love them and be believed? I don’t think so.

Okay, let’s go back to our initial premise that you do believe in the God of the Bible. Since you believe the Bible you have no choice but to believe in both Heaven or Hell as eternal destinations for all human beings.

We do know more than a few things about heaven and hell. As just one example, the Bible reveals some of the things that Jesus Christ said when he walked among us. At this point, considering only His words, it really does not matter whether you see Jesus Christ as being God or as just being a prophet, either role will work for the moment.

When you study his words that are revealed in the New Testament a simple count will show you that Jesus spent more energy warning us about the perils of hell then he did the glories of Heaven. And, he made it very clear that each of us have a choice only between two eternal destinies. We will spend eternity in heaven with God or we will spend eternity in hell being separated from God.

Now on the day that God judges you as to whether you will spend eternity in heaven or in hell, the actions of some people will say that they love him. The actions of others will indicate that they truly hate him. Which group do you think he will be sending to heaven? Leaving which group that will spend eternity in Hell separated from him? I mean, since those people hate him why would they ever want to spend eternity with him in the first place? Would you want to spend eternity with someone that you hate? Of course not.

Remember now that your faithful obedience to the 10 Commandments is the litmus test of whether you love God or whether you hate God, you lying thief.

So, at this very moment do your actions say that you love God or hate him? All this time you thought you were just kind of ambivalent toward God, didn’t have any strong feelings for or against him, but your actions all along have said that you have very strong feelings toward God. Your actions say that you have actually hated him. You really don't care what He says about proper behavior. Does that bother you at all?

If that doesn’t bother you then please continue along your merry way but with the assurance that since you believe in the God of the Bible and you also believe in heaven and hell that your eternal destiny is not going to be a pleasant place, to say the least.

On the other hand if it does bother you and you are interested in making things right between you and God then stop doing things that say you hate him and start doing things that say you love him.

You need to apologize to God because you have let him down. You have failed him miserably and he deserves a lot better than that.

As with any true apology you’re going to be asking for his forgiveness, as well. You’ll need forgiveness for the things that you have already done wrong and you know that you’re still not going to keep the 10 Commandments faithfully in the future, so you need some real serious help and some very serious forgiveness because now that you know the truth about how you’ve failed God it becomes even more important that you make things right with him.

As you probably already know, there is a price to pay for the sins that you have already committed as well as those sins that you will commit in the future. You have the choice of either saying, Almighty God, I’m sorry for what I’ve done and I ask you to punish me accordingly even though I know this will mean eternal separation from you, or you can say, Almighty God, I am sorry for what I’ve done to you and I ask you to forgive me based on what Jesus Christ did for me in dying on the cross and rising to life again.

Choosing your eternal destiny is determined more by your actions then your words. Your actions either say that you love God or you really could not care less about him. Your lack of concern about your relationship with God only reveals more strongly how much you hate him.

Remember that it is imperative you apologize to God for the lifestyle that you have lived, the one that said that you hate him and then ask for his forgiveness in Christ.

The change that will then come into your life will astound you. Although you will still fail many times along the way your sincere desire will be to live a life that is pleasing to God.

Your life will say continually that you love him and not hate him and he will recognize you for that and bless you if only by giving you assurance of living with him for all eternity.

And, you’ll know that your very best days are still ahead of you.

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I think of Joseph and his life. I remember what the Bible tells us about a large part of his life being disliked within his own family, spending time as a slave, in the dungeon, and yet when the timing was right there was God putting him the second in command in Egypt.

Who among us would not be willing to endure a lot of bad stuff if only we knew that in the end God wins. And, in the end we will share in many of the benefits of that victory.

Then I think of Moses and his being born into slavery. He becomes a murderer and spends 40 years in exile. Yet look how great his life turned out simply because when God came calling Moses agreed to go walking with God.

And whenever Moses needed help God was always there on time. A very obvious example comes to mind in the parting of the Red Sea. Remember that the sea was stable and it didn't look like anything was going to change yet Moses, in faith, took that step into the Red Sea and just in time, once again, God was right on time and parted the Red Sea for Moses and all of those following him.

Remember that as part of God's family you will be also able to count on God always being on time for you. As one lady said to me many many years ago, God may not seem to come when you call him but he is always on time.

Can you think of any examples in your own life where things seemed to be very miserable yet just in the nick of time God was there to help you? Why not take a few moments to add your story to this post?

I mean even just looking at the short term we know in heaven there is not going to be

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You need to know however that being in heaven is not our final destination and, naturally, it's not even our best destination! There really is a lifestyle that is better than living in heaven in a spirit form even though we will also be with Jesus Christ. Nope, even then there is a whole lot more that we have to look forward to. And all God's children said, "Hallelujah".

No, just stop and think about this rationally for a moment. Speaking in general terms we know, if only from first Thessalonians, that the Lord is going to return to planet earth and bring all of the departed saints with him. Do you remember a crucial thing that happens at that moment? How about this, "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first."

The dead in Christ will rise at that point and the spiritual existence that you have been living as a saint in heaven with Jesus Christ will be kicked up a notch as you once again take on physical form with your body. This clearly is the superior existence for mankind. Not to be living forever in a spiritual existence, as great as that will be since we will be in the presence of Jesus,but God's plan is and always has been for us to live in all eternity in a physical body.

Please forgive me for skipping a lot of scripture and a lot of doctrine to get to this next point, but in the end when there is created a new heaven and a new earth and the new city of Jerusalem, all of God's people will be inhabiting this place blessed with physical bodies.

You don't have to go any further than the book of Genesis to see that when God created mankind he created him with a physical body. And he said, "it was good." Which is another way of saying that his creation, mankind, was created perfect. Perfect? Yes, perfect. Perfectly formed in a physical human body. This is what we have to look forward to. Not just some kind of spiritual existence, not to minimize how great that will be, but even being in heaven with Jesus will only be a holding action to greater things when we are given our new perfect eternal bodies.

You know, I'm pretty sure that God is not going to give us any choice about what our new perfect and eternal bodies are going to look like but for me, as best I can, I am going to hold out for hair on the top of my head.

How about you? What's one or two great things that you are looking forward to experienceing or having?

Or maybe this is a bit more personal for you and you have made a decision for Christ but one year later two years later or five years later you really don't see any difference in your life and sometimes you wonder

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Over the course of two decades of being saved I've been blessed by having the opportunity to share the need for Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior with a lot of people. Many of these people have made professions of faith [while many others there was a seed planted that may or may not have grown at a later date and to salvation.

That was the blessing, to be used by God as part of the process of others becoming a Christian. The great frustration however was to look back over 15 to 20 years of witnessing to people and to realize that for even those that had claimed the name of Jesus Christ in salvation by faith there was little to nothing in their lives that indicated that they really had ever been saved.

At one point a couple of us brought up this point in a church meeting, that although our church had a reputation for being a soul winning church, the results were that year after year after year consistently for nearly a decade that we could account for, the overwhelming majority of those professions of faith were nowhere to be found in any church, our church or elsewhere.

The logical path, we thought at the time, was that we were not pushing discipleship opportunities strongly enough and so we began developing new courses and promoting new opportunities for people to grow in Christ. Yet the same people no more no less continue to attend these opportunities for growth. Where were those that have been saved in the last two months six months a year? Where were they hiding? Why could we not get them to come out and be seen?

After a while of this we started searching again for the correct answer. It wasn't just leading people to Christ and having them make a profession of faith in Christ as Lord and Savior,and the answer obviously was not fully in just encouraging them to take advantage of discipleship opportunities, so where then were we failing?

There had to be something obvious that we were missing. And, making the answer to this question was even more pressing when we realized that there seems to be a universal truth in almost all churches. Professions of faith are made but a year later statistics indicate that 90% of people making professions of faith are nowhere to be found in a Christian environment or living Christian lives as little as 12 months later.

The answer is simple but many faceted. The simple answer is that we were saving people and not God. We were telling people to repeat the sinner's prayer or to indicate to them what a prayer for salvation would sound like and because they uttered this prayer we thought that they were saved. The evidence seems to indicate that this was all a folly and that we had failed these people and failed God at the same time.

If we save someone then quite obviously they are not saved. It quickly becomes clear that God had not saved them because if God had saved them in Christ Jesus than they would have always been saved.

I believe that the answer to our problems and the thing that I have changed since then in my presentation of the Gospel is simply going back to the greatest evangelist for Jesus Christ of all time and that would be Paul.

Paul was quoted as saying in Acts 26:20, "... but I kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance."

In short, because I quickly have to bring this post to a close, too many of us have forgotten that being saved is all about God's power. And his message in Genesis that in creating heaven and earth and mankind so he can fellowship with him it's all about our returning to God. And only God in the Holy Spirit can draw any person to him in repentance. It is only when someone is truly experiencing the pain of disappointing God in their lives that they can then be saved.

It is not scriptural to run around offering fire insurance policies to people by explaining to them that if they do not turn to God that they will burn in eternity in hell. At best this is only a secondary factor. The first priority in the life of any individual being saved is that they are contrite over the sinful lives that they have led. That suddenly they are distressed because they failed God. Suddenly, because of God's intercession as the Holy Spirit, they realize that they have lived their lives as a series of bad priorities and lousy decisions and they seek to apologize to God for their actions. And to apologize without excuse. No holding back.

It is then that we have God's opportunity to present to an individual what they must do to be saved, that is to be forgiven for the eternal consequences of their sin.

I believe it is clear from Scripture that it is only in that situation when the Holy Spirit has truly convicted someone of their need for repentance that one can truly be saved.

"It is a trustworthy statement, preserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners". 1 Tim. 1:15

It's kind of obvious, don't you think, that in order to be saved from the consequences of one's sin, first one needs to be convinced and convicted to the depths of one's soul that one truly is a sinner fully deserving to spend eternity in hell? They, when anyone asks, "Saved from what? What was I saved from? I was saved from the consequences of my actions. You know, I was ready to spend eternity in Hell because I realized that's all I deserved. Then I heard about God's forgivness available through Christ. WOW! What an experience.

Hey, Reader, you have anything that you can add regarding your experience in witnessing to the lost? Let me encourage you to register and leave a comment or two.

There's a lot of important information that can be derived from the scripture quoted above but for now just

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For those that have simply a nominal belief in the accuracy of Scripture the above quote must be very difficult to swallow. It is really stretching the imagination to try to make a valid point in believing that God is real but speaking of the return of Jesus Christ is some kind of perverted fantasy. It simply defies common sense to think that the Bible does not mean what it says here when it indicates that Jesus Christ himself will be coming again.

Where we go beyond that is looking at the lives of those of us that believe the fact of Jesus coming again is a literal truth yet our lives do not reflect that.

Yes, I know all about us still being imperfect and that although the Holy Spirit is both willing and able to help us in our desire to live sin free lives my experience has been that most people claiming the name of Jesus Christ as Savior really do not have a heart's desire to live lives that are pleasing to God.

I guess that is one of the great mysteries of life in Christ that so many of us profess to believe that Jesus Christ is alive and is coming again yet you can never tell it by the lives that we lead.

Not that we fully expect to be perfect in this lifetime but how many Christians do you know that are deeply grieved each and every time that they fail God in the decisions and in the choices that they make day-to-day?