Archive for December, 2008

December 7^th, 2008

Making your Own Personal Choice

To be saved, to be a member of Christ’s kingdom, to be included in His covenant, you must personally choose Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.

You must do it, Yourself.  By your own decision.

1.     In Deuteronomy 30:19, Moses tells the Israelites that He has presented two alternatives to them.  Then what does he ask them to do?

2.    According to Romans 14:12, what will each of us have to do?

3.    In Matthew 16:15, what did Jesus ask His disciples?

Choosing Christ has to be so personal that it remains a part of you when everything else changes… when you are grown up and away from your parents.. when new friends take the place of your old friends.. when you are out of school and working on a job… when you move to a new city to live…

This is not something that your parents can do for you.  It isn’t something that you should do just because your parents tell you to, or want you to do it, or just because your friends are doing it.

You must decide that YOU believe that Jesus is the Son of God and your Savior; that is what He asked His disciples to do in Matthew 16:15.  Jesus wants you to choose Him personally, to love Him personally, and to follow Him personally.  That is the foundation of being a Christian.

What choice will you make?

4.    Name some people in the New Testament who personally chose to believe in and follow Jesus, and tell where and how it happened.  (hint: Matthew 4:18-22, Matthew 9:9, and Acts 16:14-15)

In order to choose Jesus Christ, a person must un-choose, or give up, the ways of living that disagree with Christ. The Bible calls the things you give up sin.

5.    According to Acts 17:30 what does God command all people to do?

6.    According to  I John 1:9, God will forgive our sins and cleanse us if we do what?

7.    According to the first part of Jeremiah 25:5, what did God’s prophets tell the people to do?

We have learned in lesson 2 and from the Bible that we all need to be saved from sin, and that Jesus died on the cross so that our sin could be forgiven.  In lesson 3, we learned that Jesus came to change our inner nature from sin to goodness, but we have to cooperate with Him for this to happen.  The first way in which we need to cooperate is to repent, which means to decide to give up our sin.

We need to confess what is wrong with us, to be truly sorry for it, and to be willing to get rid of it so that we can belong 100% to Christ.

There are three basic kinds of sin:

1.     Selfishness; caring more about ourselves than about God or other people.

2.    Pride; wanting to be higher than others, maybe even higher than God.

3.    Dishonesty; putting on a false front and telling lies to deceive others, God and even ourselves.

We need to repent, not only of the actual sins we have committed, but of all the sinful ways that are part of our character.  There is sin in all human beings.  Little sins need to be repented just as much as big ones, because they can be just as harmful when it comes to separating us from God.

8.    To truly repent, what are some other things we might have to do besides confessing our sins to God?

9.    Does a person have to repent just once in there lifetime, or might they have to repent many times?  Give reasons for your answers.

Bible Verse for December 14^th

John 14:1  Jesus said; "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; also trust in me.