To repent means to turn away from your disobedience to God’s Word, the Bible, in genuine sorrow. Disobedience to God’s way is called “sin.”
“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).

CONFESS

To confess means to verbally acknowledge your sin and your need of Jesus as your Lord (controller) and Saviour (deliverer).
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful arid just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
“If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9).

BELIEVE

To believe means to completely accept what God has said, so you can act on it.
“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” (Hebrews 11:6).
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31).
“Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16).

FOLLOW

To follow Jesus Christ daily in life means that you will want to obey what He teaches you in His Word. Through obedience, we show the world that we belong to Christ.
“[Jesus Christ] became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Hebrews 5:9).
“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Sixty days came and no earthquakes or tidal waves had hit. Supposedly, prayers had stopped them.

No doubt you have heard of similar prophecies. Some of them fall through. Some appear to happen much as they were predicted.

These are only samples of today’s mania for looking into the future. Some claim to foretell by using crystal balls or horoscopes. Many claim to have direct revelations from God or from the beyond. What shall Christians say to such things?

People today are searching for security—a security tnat goes beyond the present into the mysterious and sometimes terrifying future. People have not found this security in Christ so they are turning to anything they think will give them a view of the future they dread. Interestingly, most of their searching is earth-centered. People want to know what is going to happen to them here on earth. Few seek for security through Jesus Christ. All this is evidence of man’s inborn desire for security in a power that is higher than he is.

We would not say that God cannot give people warnings through dreams or premonitions. That would be limiting God. But we do need to be exceedingly careful what we believe, especially when people publicly parade their “gift” of prophecy.

Personal premonitions and warnings are quite different from public and long-range predictions. For example, there is no reason why God would or should reveal what political party will be victor in the next election. Jeanne Dixon, a self-proclaimed prophetess in the mid-twentieth century, made such predictions and was sometimes wrong.

When Christians engage in such things, their error reflects on the whole Christian church. Who knows the number of people who have turned against the church because of false predictions?

Supposed prophets can be in error frequently and continue to gain large followings. But Satan takes advantage of erroneous predictions by professing Christians to plant doubt in the minds of the multitude.

What then does the Bible say about the future in this age of seeking? God has given us in His Word as much as we need to know concerning the future. Here are some things we know for sure:

We know that society is getting worse and worse. This will continue. “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).

We also know the future of the world and the universe. The old will be destroyed and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall he burned up. Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:10, 13).

We do not, however, wait for the end of the world in ignorance. The Bible tells us what the end will be. It shows us why the world is breaking down and where the course of rebellion against God will end. The Bible tells us that conditions will get worse and worse. We know the eternal destiny of the wicked and of the righteous. All who forget God will be turned into hell. All who follow Him in this life will be with Him forever. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:51, 52, 54).

We rejoice that the Bible also reveals the hope and the bright future of all those who turn to God in repentance and follow His plan.

God does not expect us to know more about the future than He has revealed. He is the only one who knows and controls the “unknown” future. The warning of Isaiah against fortune-tellers well applies to all such satanic searching. “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God?” (Isaiah 8:19).

“Trust in the lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5, 6).

-by Roger L. Berry

When you reach the end of yourself, look up to God!

This is the time of year when people are thinking about the past, including the mistakes they made. They may have already suffered from the things they did last year and don’t want to repeat what they did.

While many people try to review the past and do better, others procrastinate. They go on living as they have, hoping to escape serious consequences. They may reason, “I’m young only once and am having such a blast. I’ll just wait till I’m older to settle down and make a change.” Others think they’re invulnerable. They’re in good health and are strong physically. “Nothing can hurt me,” they imagine. They are the kind who sport stickers that say “NO FEAR.” Still others have plenty of money and, to them, money means “power.” They fail to realize that they can lose it all in a day’s time.

Deep down, however, most youth realize that they do need to make a change. So what is the solution? A few New Year’s resolutions? Turning over a new leaf? I remember how I used to play the “new leaf” game every year. Once I resolved to study at least two hours every night. That lasted only a couple weeks until exams were over.

More than once I resolved to clean up my life and stop reading magazines that were leading me down the wrong road.

I read the diary of Benjamin Franklin who made a careful list of all his faults and excesses. Each day he checked off how he was doing in each of the areas. With grit and determination he made some improvements. I was becoming excited. Perhaps such organization was the answer to my problems. Then I despaired when I reached the end of his experiment in self-improvement. The old excesses kept resurfacing and Franklin admitted that he did not have what it took to perfect his life.

Finally I got wise to the whole thing and admitted my resolves were flops. Then I thought of a solution that was amazingly simple. I would just stop making stupid resolutions—no use to begin something I knew I couldn’t finish. Glorious freedom! No more resolutions to worry about!

But it wasn’t that simple. Something was “eating” at me. I knew that I needed to do better in a lot of ways, resolutions or no resolutions. “New-leafing-it” wasn’t the solution to my dilemma either. There had to be a more basic change— a change more significant than a mental assertion that I needed to do better.

I found my solution, not in life-reformation but in life-transformation. I found my answer in the Bible, not in self-effort or in emulating famous people.

Jesus once told the story of a young man who experienced this same life-transformation but only after flirting with a hedonistic, self-centered lifestyle. It happened this way . . .

The fellow was always independent. He demanded his share of the family wealth so he could go “live it up,” doing things he never got to do at home. He traveled to the big city where he could live the “life.” He had a “riot” until his money ran out. Then the tide turned against him. The people he thought were friends did not care for him or try to help him. He had to stoop to get a job— imagine the humiliation! Apparently the only job he could readily find was hog feeding. He needed the money, but what an awful job to get it. He even got so hungry on the job that he longed to eat what the pigs left. Many a young person, like that young man, has stooped to things he never dreamed of.

The Bible says the young man “came to himself.” Sadly, it sometimes takes coming to the end of self to find help. He didn’t resolve to search for a better job or to be a “good boy” in the future—no indeed! He resolved to completely change his way of acting. He decided to go back to his father, say “I’m sorry,” and live differently.

That was not leaf-turning. That was the same as throwing away the old leaf and the old book too and beginning a new book. Needless to say, his father, accepting him back, forgave him, and loved him.

Each of us is like that wayward son. If we aren’t living right, if we don’t measure up to God’s standards, we’ve got to do more than turn over a “new leaf.” We must repent of our wrongdoing and completely realign our thinking and actions to fit God’s way.

Any resolves we make must be God’s will. We must rely on God’s power for success. Nobody, not even Christians, can carry out plans alone, without help. We must admit that God is right when He says, “Without me ye can do nothing.”

We must rely solely on the power of the Holy Spirit of God. Trusting our own powers to change or reform, we will only sink deeper into despair. God’s Word, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit of God, will give us guidance in starting a new life. However, we have our part to do. We must be willing to change, to live according to God’s instructions.

If you are not walking in obedience to God’s way this New Year, come back to the God who made you and become a new creation in Him. Then seek God’s will in finding a fellowship of believers who are also striving to live by the Bible, be baptized, and walk in the way the Bible teaches.

“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them” (Ecclesiastes 12:1).

“Trust in the lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5, 6).

I. The Nature of Love

“God is love,” wrote the Apostle John (1 John 4:8). We conclude from this fact that God is the essence of genuine love. All that He is and all that He does originates from the quality or attribute of love.

When God created Eve to be a suitable mate for Adam, He did so because He loved Adam. His love was to be perpetuated in Adam’s love for Eve. God also designed that the human family be propagated through the act of intimate married love and devotion.

Divine love can best be defined as God seeking the highest good for the greatest benefit of undeserving mankind now and forever. When Christ died sacrificially on the cross of Calvary, that expressed God’s love at its highest. “Greater love hath no man than this,” said Jesus, “that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Yet, Jesus not only laid down His life for his friends, but also for His enemies.

True love and sacrifice are inseparable. To love is to give and to keep on giving. It knows no limits, for it will give until life itself is gone. Every mother who bears a child knows, in a measure, what such sacrifice means. Every husband should be humbled to share it and give sacrificially of himself.

All human love has its origin in God. The affection that a Christian husband and wife have for each other comes from God. The love that parents share with their children comes from God. Genuine love shared with other people also comes from God.

The nature of divine love always seeks the very best for its object. It is kind, considerate, benevolent, forgiving, understanding, trustful, corrective, and helpful. It does not base its love on the worthiness of its object. It acts in a way to help the other to want to be worthy of love.

II. The Failure of Human Love

Human love falls short of divine love. The disobedience of Adam and Eve, our first parents, as well as our own disobedience, forfeits genuine love. Sin is disobedience to the law of God. It is selfishness. It seeks its own pleasure at the expense of others. Sin in the heart breaks up marriages and wrecks relationships. When a husband cheats his wife or the wife walks out on her husband, it is sin. It is sin when parents desert or abandon their children. In sinning, we allow Satan to control our lives and actions. He injects the poison of suspicion, mistrust, selfishness, and hate. He deceives us by making us believe we are not accountable for our actions. He distorts the meaning of true love and makes it a false love.

III. Love Regained

Jesus fully personifies love. He came to a world of people who had lost the meaning of true love. He showed us that divine love is stronger than sin, hate, or lust. Jesus came to restore sinful man and woman to a holy God. He also restored the sacredness of marriage. He made it possible for a man to love his wife as himself and for a wife to reverence or respect her husband (see Ephesians 5:33).

Do you want to have a happy, fulfilling marriage? Invite Jesus into your heart and home. Ask Him to fill your heart with His love. Pray for cleansing from the sins of selfishness, thoughtlessness, and indifference. Pray for what it takes to forgive your partner’s faults and failures. Pray for the ability to speak kindly, honestly, and encouragingly.

IV Love Expressed

Sacrifice is love expressed to its highest degree. Jesus is our supreme example. Do you want your marriage to succeed? Then sacrifice yourself. Do you want your home to be strong? Give of yourself, all of yourself. Give and keep on giving. When Jesus went to Calvary, He gave everything, even His own blood. Why? Because He loves you. He kept nothing for Himself. Neither can you if you want your marriage and home to succeed and reach its highest potential.

Love pays attention to details. Husbands, are you providing adequate shelter, nourishing food, and sufficient clothing for your family? Are you considerate of physical weakness and emotional stress? Are you giving time and encouragement and teaching to your children? Wives, are you encouraging your children? Do you understand and appreciate your husband’s labors? Are you thanking and encouraging him in his leadership role? This goes a long way in making your marriage what God intended it to be.

It is right and normal for a young man and woman to dream and plan for a Utopia of love and intimacy in marriage. However, love is more than dreams. The reality of true love involves pain, sickness, work, financial responsibility, and even human failure. The love of Christ for us does not rise and fall with our circumstances. The same is true in a Christian marriage. Neither will Godlike love diminish with time or circumstances. It is a commitment till “death do us part.”

We began with the great affirmation that God is love. We conclude with the fact that when a husband and a wife open their hearts to the love of God and invite Jesus in, they will discover a richness and fulness of joy and blessing they never knew before. I have found it to be true. You can too!

“Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself” (Ephesians 5:24, 25, 28).

-by J. Luke Martin

“And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23).

We face a double dilemma. First of all, the Bible declares the way to life as a narrow way which comparatively few people will find. The broad way to destruction, after all, promises easy travel and lots of company. A recent issue of Time Magazine featured several “Christian” leaders who promote a health and wealth gospel. If the shiny Rolls Royce on the cover of the magazine is part of the package, then obviously the wealth promotion is not about the narrow way to life. And that exactly is the second dilemma. There will be many (according to Jesus’ teachings) who profess to know God. They are merely deceived. They are not partakers of the Spirit of Christ. They do not know Jesus Christ, and Jesus does not know them.

We have had enough rich and powerful evangelical leaders who fell. What do we expect from their followers? After all, people who indulge in all that money can buy will not be satisfied with what money can buy. Wrong moral choices will follow naturally enough.

Do you love God and keep His commandments? The valid answer to that question would determine your eternal destiny if you faced the judgment of God this very hour. Such a moment will indeed arrive. The burning question in that moment is not a profession of Christianity. It is not a claim to various good works. The only question is whether God knows you as one of His own.

The understanding of a valid assurance of salvation is further described in a quick survey of the Book of First John. Consider these verses: “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (1:6). “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (2:3).

In modern evangelism, too often the point of being “saved” or being “born again,” focuses solely on a particular time or place of “trusting” Jesus Christ as Saviour. Too often there is little understanding of the holiness of God and the contrasting sin-fulness of sin. Little is expected, and little happens out of such decisions. The evidence is already in. We see little contrast in the sinful lives of the “saved” versus the sinful lives of unbelievers. But along with this easy gospel, many church leaders then promote the false notion that such a decision unconditionally seals one’s personal destiny in heaven forever.

I have discussed Christian faith at length with a number of people who live immoral and even criminal lives. These believe they are Christians because of a “decision” once made for Christ. This assumption apparently offers the forgiveness of sin without concern for deliverance and cleansing from sin.

While we rightly reject the false notion that we work our way into God’s kingdom by doing good deeds, or by obedience to a list of rules, we are wrong if we assert that saving faith does not dictate surrender to God and a radical change of life.

Let me illustrate it this way. We have comfortable facilities for guests. But what would be your response if you came and ate from our table and yet received no nourishment? You came to us hungry. Yet what looked like good nutritious food would merely bring you to starvation over time.

Our guest quarters include a private bath. You came to us from a long journey. You need a shower, and you need it badly. But suppose you indulge in a luxurious shower only to find that our shampoo, soap, and water did nothing toward your cleansing. You are also travel-weary. The bed looks very inviting. Your only hesitation is in your concern for contaminating those clean sheets. But guess what? The comfortable-looking bed yields no rest whatsoever. You think the night will never end.

The next morning you face the world: hungry, dirty, and tired. Could you convince yourself that it really was a very positive experience?

Do we, in our churches talk about being fed with the Bread of life, yet find no nourishment in the Scriptures? Do we sing of being washed in the blood of the Lamb, yet remain in the filth of our sins? Do we claim that those who labor and are heavy-laden may come to Jesus for rest, while living in guilt, frustration, and bondage to evil habits?

Make no mistake. If people will eat at our table, they will be nourished. If they use our shampoo, soap and water, they will be cleansed. If they sleep in our guest bed, they will be refreshed.

Now they don’t become our guests by bringing in groceries, or by digging a well in our backyard, or by placing their sleeping bags beside our guest bed. (This would be parallel to salvation by works.)

To take full advantage of our facilities is the only logical way for a guest to behave. In fact, we wouldn’t give you a choice. You can’t bring your own hospitality. It’s on the house. If you don’t want or need what we have, that is up to you. You can go elsewhere. We wouldn’t want you misrepresenting our hospitality.

Why am I saying this? Because a lot of people who name the name of Christ are bringing reproach on the very One who could nourish them, cleanse them, and give them rest. They seem not to understand that in receiving the “hospitality” of Christ, the very character and work of Christ is manifest in them. No, you don’t bring your own good works to Christ. What you do is abide in Him, and He produces His fruit through you.

This is the very basis of God’s judgment. “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:6).

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may’ receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

When we claim that God is forever obligated to provide heaven for every “decision” for Christ, we have it backward. It is we who face the obligation of abiding in the fruit-bearing freedom of being His guests.

-by Lester Troyer