Your Needs

The word "salvation" (1) in the Wheel Diagram means we must have a spiritual birth. Only in this way can we leave the life of Adam and be born into the life of Christ, which is an eternal life, as depicted in the Line Diagram (John 3:3). To be born spiritually, we must recognize or confess that we are in the wrong life and therefore born sinners, with the unavoidable result that we have committed sins. Then we must accept Christ into our lives, because he died for our sins.

In being born spiritually, those who receive the Spirit life of Christ into their spirits by faith become one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6:17). If they are to have victory over temptation and experience the peace of God in their lives, however, they must have assurance of their salvation. Assurance (2) must be based on the absolutes of God's inerrant Word or it will be fleeting at best.

Many who know (with their minds) that they have personally trusted the Lord Jesus Christ still lack genuine assurance because they have never felt saved. Due to emotional conflicts, many of which stem from childhood rejection, a person's feelings (or emotions) are seldom in harmony with the true facts, either as those facts are described in the Bible or as they exist in the physical world. How we feel things to be is likely to differ from how they really are until Christ becomes central in our lives and heals the damaged emotions.

The believer, old or new, must know that he enters into a secure, eternal spiritual relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ (John 5:24) and that he can rely upon and enjoy that security (3).

Though many believers know they have accepted Christ, few understand and experience the fact that they are accepted in Him. Most have been forced to earn acceptance on a human basis and feel they also must earn God's acceptance (4), though they have already been accepted entirely through their Christ Life (Eph. 1:6). Every believer is accepted, but many never accept their acceptance, or righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21), by faith.

Few, too, are those who make total commitment (5) or total surrender of their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is an irrevocable decision in which we give God our permission to do anything He wishes in us, with us, to us or through us. We give up all our rights.

Frequently, circumstances degenerate into near chaos after we make such a decision, because God honors our request for Him to take complete control of our lives. If He is to take control then we must lose control, and that is a process that seldom gives us joy! The circumstances or persons God uses to bring us to the end of our control of our lives are often not in themselves spiritual. They sometimes inflict undeserved suffering, but it is just such suffering that accomplishes God's purposes in our lives (I Pet. 2:20-21; Phil. 1:23-30). At the time of the suffering or chastening (Phil. 3:10; Heb. 12:11), it seldom seems a cause for rejoicing, but it is the crucible that produces the holiness we long for.

God's purpose for the believer is to conform him to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). Such conformity involves suffering. The "all things" of Romans 8:28 which work together for good are rarely seen as good in themselves, except in retrospect.