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

5 comments:

Jeff Richard Young said...

Dear Brian,

I think you're very close to the mark here. I'd like to nudge you even closer to the mark with this idea:

The unregenerate man can readily accept that God exists, and that he needs to do what God wants, so as to have God's favor. (Witness all the false religions.) When the unregenerate man hears from the preacher some variation on "all you have to do is just pray this prayer," he is happy to do so, in order to earn God's blessing.

I think children are especially prone to falling into this trap.

The apostles' doctrine strongly counters this phenomenon with such phrases as "by grace you are saved, through faith, and that itself is a gift from God, not by works." We preachers should keep that truth in the forefront in all our work.

Love in Christ,

Jeff

Mimmie said...

Dear Brian,
Thank you for your honesty. It may not be popular with man but it is popular with God. Like you I'd rather know that what I do and say is what God puts on my heart.
We love and miss you, Honey. Popie and Mimie

Gene Pool said...

Dear Pastor Brian,

You said:

“I personally feel 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 aren’t 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?”

Sir, it almost sounds like you are saying the folks who have had their hearts ripped out and stomped on by uncaring, vicious congregation members are the ones who are needing to be pruned from the vine--as if they are the ones unwilling to grow. Surely you don’t mean that, and I doubt you do.

The “folks in our churches [who] do some unreversible damage to the lives of others” are the ones needing to be cast from the vineyard (they have never been part of any vine). They are tares that have grown up among the vines, choking them of vitality. Those folks are the rams and goats who butt and shove, muddying the water for the gentle sheep until they drive them away. But they are seldom if ever confronted by the shepherds responsible for the flocks. These people have become agents of the devil, considering the church as “their” church, after all, they have been members since the beginning of time. And they consider those who come later as “outsiders” who spoil what they have deluded themselves to thinking is “church.” Thus we see many congregations dwindle down and down until all that remains is a few old goats.

And when you said “why would Christ want a disciple that is not willing to give their all?” Pastor Brian, when one is unwilling to give themselves completely to Jesus, that means they have not surrendered. Jesus Christ is not their Lord. They are still their own lord and master. They don’t have a saving faith. And the worst of all, they think they are saved but are actually hell-bound.

Those are the opinions of this old man.

Gene Pool

Eklektos said...

Brother Brian, I think you know that you and I are on the same page on this subject matter, but I would like to address the part “they did not lose their salvation they thought they had;.” My thinking is, if a person is involved with a church that is teaching a false or watered down gospel and this person has never been to another church to make a valid examination of his/her salvation experience, how would they know they were saved? They only know what has been taught to them, they think they are saved, how can they have an assurance, or for that matter any person who is a believer, absolutely know they are saved.

One of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is that of assurance. By the ministry of assurance, the believer can know that he is really saved and is a child of God. There are three passages that speak of this ministry.

The first passage is Romans 8:16: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”. According to this verse, the means of assurance is that the Holy Spirit testifies with the believers newborn, human spirit, his regenerated spirit, that he is indeed a child of God.

The second passage is 1 John 3:24: “And he that keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he gave us.” According to this verse the believer, knows that God now abides in him because of the spirit given to him. By means of the indwelling Holy Spirit which one receives at the moment he believes, the Holy Spirit testifies that it is God indeed who is indwelling the believer.

The third passage is 1 John 4:13: “hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” In this verse, the believer knows God abides in him, and that he abides in God, because God has given His Spirit to the believer.

Given the above scriptures for assurance of our salvation if a person is in doubt they almost certainly need to examine their hearts to see if they are willing to make the commitment and sacrifice to follow Christ, or did they just make some sort of emotional decision. Those who have made that sincere and complete decision about Christ can know without a doubt that we are saved unequivocally, and will never be taken away from our loving Father.

I am in agreement with the other people who have made comments and that is all I have to say about that.

Eklektos

Anonymous said...

I will say that too much emphasis is placed on 'say these little words and your eternity is assured' and it isn't a conversion in any sense, so it can't be false because it isn't a conversion.

the 'what now?' or 'what next?' questions go unanswered.

but the plumb line, and prayer for each of us has to be:
God, shine Your holy light in my life, where I harbor darkness, show me so that I can acknowledge it and let go of it. Show me where I'm unloving, and unlovable. Lord, let me see my life as You see it, and live victorious in YOUR victory oh Lord.