Week 9

H can also stand for How

How can a person have God’s forgiveness, eternal life, and heaven? It’s by trusting Jesus as their Load and Savior. As I wrote last time in week 8, we have been going through the meaning of the word FAITH. Now it is time to make a decision. We need to remember that it is only through the leading of Holy Spirit that anyone comes to Christ. I feel this is a very sensitive subject and that a lot of people have been given a false sense of salvation when they are not saved. Many have been lead to believe that “say this special prayer and your saved”. We may want to ask questions to help them with making that decision without being too leading. I’ve heard it put this way. If a husband was unfaithful to his wife and needed to make things right would he need to have someone help him? Now repeat after me. Tell her “I’m sorry”…”I’m sorry”. Now tell her you’ll never do it again….”I’ll never do it again. That don’t make any sense and neither would someone needing to be helped with a prayer.

Now I do realize that people may have no experience prayer and may not know how to pray. That is why I like the books suggestion about reading the “prayer of salvation” something like: “Dear God, I know that You love me. I confess my sin and need of salvation. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and arose from the grave. I turn away from my sin and place my faith in Jesus as my Savior and Lord. I want to follow You with my life. Amen.” Then ask them if this is how they feel. They can then tell God how they feel or use the printed prayer on the leaflet as long they understand that it is not a magic formula.

Back tracking a little with leading up to this decision we use a “Step of Faith” leaflet. It reviews over each letter and the Bible verses that go with each one of them. This is a great tool to use. It first has a picture of Jesus on the cross and people around the foot of the cross in today’s type of clothing. It does a good job of representing that we put him there. It was because of our sins that Jesus went to the cross. The leaflet is something that we can leave with them. It has the verses that we used on it so that they’ll know it is form the bible and not just from our mouths. It is something they can study and read over as the Lord convicts them of their need for a savior.

It also has a place to record information about the visit for both them and us. It also mentions the next steps that they should follow: Baptism, Prayer, Bible study, Devotional life, Church with other believers, and sharing Jesus with others.

Our visits

We made 4 attempts. All but one was not home. The one that was at home was a minister. He was recently relocated to our area to take care of his mother-in-law. He is not currently pasturing a Church and doesn’t have a home Church either. He and his family have just been visiting around at a wide range of different style Churches. We asked the Key Question, “In your opinion what do you understand it takes for a person to go to heaven? He gave a faith answer, to receive Christ and be born again. We had a good conversation with him and invited him to visit our Church. We also prayed with him before we left.

Prayer Request

God did save someone tonight. One of the teams was able to share the gospel with a 12 year old and her mother. The 12 year old did receive Christ. Pray that she we be strong in the Lord and that her mother will be saved too. The mother didn’t speak great English; pray that the daughter will be able to explain the Gospel to her mother in a way that she can fully understand. Isn’t God great!