I hope this dosent sound silly. Sometimes certain 'words' amaze me. I was thinking about how we refer to 'Accepting Jesus as my Saviour'/ 'Accept Salvation' etc.....
But it seems to really come down to this very word 'Accept'. It occurs to me that a lot of people do not 'Accept'....that Jesus 'is'. They don't accept the very 'idea/concept' of Jesus.
I am thinking of Hebrews 11:6 where it say's, But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
I would really like to understand 'why' people choose not to believe....I really do not remember what I felt about it before salvation....I guess I must have always 'believed'....even when I had not yet actively 'come' to Him.
I think this "always believed" is that universal knowledge of God that we all have, and we either deny or "initially" accept; and I believe satan works OT mostly on this, http://www.wikihow.com/Recognize-the...ristian-Models ,
and similar ways to make sure that newbies get as twisted a message as possible.
Christ remained quite abstract, to me at least, under the standard American Christian model; the words always sounded right--when they weren't adding stuff like "with the initial evidence of yadayada"--but the overall image just wasn't the tree of life i had hoped for? I see this changing now, ty God, but I'd say that Christians have done themselves damage here, and have to work around a proselytizing image now.
I'd say the acceptance level ends up being a bell curve, don't you think? It seems quite a ways from "never thought about it much" to "I'm an atheist." And you must admit their childhood training overwhelmingly favors selfishness and fosters greed, etc., especially in a public school setting, even if the household is solidly Christian? Outside influences can just be overwhelming when the kids are not home most of the time, and til recently, neither mom or dad were not home when they were. We make this.
I'm not sure why this comes to the surface here, but it should be noted that there is a selfish component even in a person's desire to walk closer to God; I would say beginning component, but I find it present after...35 years. I wish to have stature in the Kingdom of God. Surely not an unselfish motive; hmm, not sure it's entirely altruistic...selfish altruism, altruistic selfishness. Hmm.
I have a problem with the phrases of "accepting Jesus" into our lives.
Jesus plainly said : Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.
Saying that "we accept Jesus" seems to be sort of backwards to me..like Jesus is sitting there just waiting for us humans to "accept him" into our crowd. Seems disrespectful towards our Creator who offers us so much and we talk about "accepting" him. It seems that we should be begging Him to allow us to serve Him instead of just "accepting Him" don't ya think?
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It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. (Psalms 118:8)
And forgivenson, my post is not meant to disparage you or your thoughts in any way. I've had these feelings about this for many years. So please do not take it as such. Thanks in advance.
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It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. (Psalms 118:8)
The sinner whoever they may be, practice sin without any conscience toward God. That is what is sometimes called being spiritually dead in sin. Those who have not been regenerated are spiritually dead in acknowledging the fact that God does exist and is real.
Then there are those who acknowledge the presence of God and state they believe there's a god and they believe in God but, God is not a living reality to them because they have never for some reason or other experienced him.
I was raised in religion as a child growing up. Always believed in God and sometimes talked to him. The problem was, the religion never transformed me and never taught me to be transformed. They taught that doing all the religious acts would save me, but it didn't.
One day when I really heard the gospel preached I surrendered my life to him [ Jesus ] by faith and with a heart of genuine repentance toward God, that's when He became a living reality and not just a figure of thought.
That happened as a result of His spirit regenerating my spirit and causing it to become alive unto Him, or in other words, Jesus ' power gave me a born again experience where I passed from spiritual dead unto spiritual life in God.
Some people just are not master communicators. If they show a life reborn in the spirit and a sincere desire to live for God I am not going to criticize how they express how they got there. If they say that they 'accepted' Jesus as part of their testimony or even tell others to 'accept' Jesus as part of spreading the gospel, I am not going to knock it. I think it's the doing of those things that matters to God- Not how strong our voice is, how perfectly structured, how theologically correct, or precisely delivered our words... But that our hearts, now being changed by the work of the Holy spirit, desire to see another heart changed.
Sometimes, when things get down to semantics, I know that we have way too much time on our hands.
Last edited by Titus2woman; 02-16-2012 at 07:19 AM.
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