Monday, June 15, 2009

False Conversion

My daughter asked me the other day about a friend that had accepted Christ but still did bad things and enjoyed doing them. Are they a believer? What a question from an 11 year old!!

My answer is this: When someone around us leaves their faith (this is what it seems to us) and will not be recovered or will not return, they did not lose their salvation they thought they had; they DID NOT passionately and with complete surrender receive or possess the gift of salvation through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ in the first place. They assumed that they were converted, but in reality, they werent.

19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
1 John 2:19 (NASB95) John is writing here that "they would have remained"....if they really were part of us, part of the body of Christ.

Why does this happen:
1. Preachers are presenting a false gospel!! They are not preaching the Good News. It is very watered down and one of the main factors of conversion is repentance and frankly that is unpopular in today's church. Lots of believers are no different from those in the world and one wonder's if they are truly God's children or not. The source of this insanity today is the preaching and teaching of God's Word. I heard a lady tell me this recently, "I don't want to go to church where they make me feel bad or yell at me." I wanted to scream!! Honey, that is called CONVICTION and the Holy Spirit is tossing and turning all around you about the life you are living.

2. People do not want to live according to God's Word...they would rather make up what they need to do to in their life not to be able to surrender to Christ fully. "But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron" 1 Timothy 4:1-2 (NASB95) Some are convinced that what they have heard is what is OK. This is why we havde so much trouble with drinking and divorce these days in the church. We are confused by deceit and demons. Who gets the glory for that?

3. We focus on numbers in the church. We are in a race instead of being concerned that one believer truly understands what it means to be saved. "We had the most baptisms last year or at youth camp we had 60 saved and so on." Our discipleship process is weak and we do nothing to fix it. New beleivers hardly have a chance because of our Las Vegas style of church today. Come on in, get saved and then do whatcha want, why, because we all are!! You got your fire insurance from hell and our church is growing!! AMEN!!! (note the heavy sarcasm here please)

I personally fell great pain when one leaves the church from hurt feelings. I wonder what has been done and in most cases folks in our churches do some unreversible damage to the lives of others. But do you know also that Jesus prunes His vines and sometimes folks need to go if they arent willing to grow. If you are turning away from the path of discipleship and unwilling to follow God's Word, then you ask yourself, why would Christ want a disciple that is not willing to give their all? He gave His all on the cross for you and me!! True conversion includes a deep desire to deny yourself, take up your cross, and to follow Jesus no matter what or where!!

Quit following deception and get real!! Brian