Prior to the point of being indwelt by Jesus Christ, a person will have the Word of God sown into their hearts. The Word of God, like a seed sown in the ground, works supernaturally in the heart. The Spirit of God is working in hearts to convict of sin, righteousness, and the judgment. Some have the “light” of the lives of believers around them and that impacts them. (Matt 5:16). God will also send others to water the Word (1Cor. 3:6, 7) There will be time between the initial sowing and the “harvest”– the response of faith, repenting, and calling on the name of the Lord to be saved. At that point, if you could segment a “moment of time” into a thousand bits, you would see a wondrous work of God in that life as the individual is baptized into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This detail is itemized in Romans chapters 5-8; Colossians 2 and elsewhere. It culminates in our being a cleansed and purified temple, fit for the indwelling presence of God (Jesus Christ), we are made priests of God, we are indwelt by Jesus Christ, and we are made “one spirit” with Him (1Cor. 6:17), and we are raised up with Christ and seated with Christ in the heavenly (Eph. 2:6). Jesus gives us His life, a gift of eternal life. (1John 5:11, 12– he who has the Son has the LIFE, he who does not have the Son of God does not have the LIFE.) The reception of this new life is the new birth, or regeneration. And this is the work of God that saves us: God sending the Spirit of His Son into our hearts to give us the gift of eternal life.

“We are SAVED by the washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5), We are SAVED by His life (Rom. 5:10), and when we are “made alive with Jesus Christ, by grace we have been SAVED” (Eph. 2:5).

As to the life a person leads after they receive Christ… We are given two types of examples in the Word of God. In 1Cor. 3, Paul uses the analogy to a building. Christ is the foundation. There is no other foundation that can be laid… but after the foundation men will build with wood, hay and stubble, or gold, silver, and precious stones. We all will face going through the fire. Unfortunately, some will find that their whole life’s effort will burn, except for the foundation. Paul says of these unfruitful believers, “they will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as by fire” (1Cor. 3:15).

The first few years of your Christian life seems to have been built with poor materials. But if you placed your faith into Jesus Christ (faith, repentance and calling upon the name of the Lord), then I believe that God did what Paul said He would do, “Call upon the name of the Lord and you will be saved”. If you called, then God saved you, and sent His Son to live in your heart, with the promise that He would never leave or forsake you.

God’s other analogy is agricultural. He wants us to bear good fruit. Jesus tells us what keeps us from bearing good fruit in the parable of the sower. If a person doesn’t grow in the word, getting rooted and grounded in love, then when he faces trials, he will not be able to produce the fruit that God would like to see. Or there are the weeds and thorns of the Christian life: the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in will choke the Word, causing the life to be unfruitful (Mark 4:19). Praise the Lord, “He who began a good work in us will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”! Like a good daddy He will discipline and/or prune us and help to motivate us toward the fruit that He created us to bear. (One of the benefits of being a poor gardener is all of the spiritual analogies fleshed out before my eyes. If my vegetable plant does not produce the proper vegetables because it didn’t get properly rooted, or because the weeds choked it out, I do not say it wasn’t really a vegetable plant after all, contrary to some “theologians”. I also see how vigelent I need to be to keep those weeds out of my garden. I find it is much easier to get rid of the weeds when they are small. Some weed roots can be very difficult to remove if they get too established, and if you do not remove all of the root, then it is a given that you will see that same weed, in the same place again…)

So all of us need to be passionate about getting the Word of God into our lives. It is great to see you motivating and equipping others to do just that with your blog. We need to know that the weeds never stop growing, and learn how to keep pulling them out when we first see them. And when we face trials, or suffer from someone elses sin, we need to remember that our responsse is builing upon our foundation. Will we build with wood, hay or stubble? Or will we let the Spirit empower us toward the gold, silver and precious stones.

Thanks for sharing this

I also thank God for people like you who are a source of wisdom and knowledge for someone such as myself who needs to grow exponentially in the Lord! I am so glad I found your blog. Sorry this is such a late post but I only recently found this site. Keep up the great work!