God has a plan for our redemption, it’s not a “build -your-own-salvation” plan, it’s a set plan that never changes.

God’s plan for our salvation is to receive Jesus.

What does that mean exactly?

In order to receive Jesus, some things have to occur in the person who is receiving. These things are:
Realizing that you are a sinner and that your sins separates you from God.
Realizing that you have no way to reconcile yourself to God on your own.
Being remorseful for your sin and desiring to be reconciled to God.
Realizing that Jesus paid the price for your sin, the sin that separated you from God, meaning, Jesus is the only person who could have paid for your sin.
Jesus, who was sinless, died for us who were sinful, to pay the price we could not pay to reconcile us to God for all eternity.
Salvation…is being reconciled to God…. by repenting of our sins and receiving the payment that Jesus provided for our sin and receiving Jesus to live in our heart.


There is no other way.

I’ve been pondering a video that Joel Richardson and FAI put out (linked—->)https://youtu.be/53FvVldlffI
One of the things he talked about was how some Christians are drawn away into deception and end up being lost because they departed from sound doctrine. They begin adhering to a belief that is a departure from the Gospel, so profoundly they lose their beliefs in Jesus even though, they are really convinced, they haven’t. I was bothered by this idea… I’ve gone down a rabbit hole or two in my time and believed things that sounded perfectly correct, only to find out later, I was wrong. Sincerity is not righteousness… you can be sincere and be sincerely wrong.

What bothers me are the times when I was sincerely wrong, my heart was in the right place, I was trying my best to serve the Lord and do what he wanted me to do. I loved Jesus and was TRYING SO HARD to be a good Christian. I was wrong though about some things…so very sincerely wrong. So when Joel stated talking about being lost because we believed something that was a departure from truth, I was shaken…. I remember how convinced I was.

I felt kind of hopeless… I know that I can’t trust my own intellect to guide me.

I pondered that all evening and again this morning while I was praying that God give me some hope about it.

Here is what I have in my spirit… and the first thing I heard when I started thinking on it.

Luke 11:9-13

⁹ And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

¹⁰ For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

¹¹ If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

¹² Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

¹³ If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

This is the key to staying in right with God and to keeping sound doctrine. A person has to have a close personal relationship and to not allow anything to get between their relationship with God. It’s easy to do… for example, one of the times I was deceived was a false doctrine I had pulled from the word myself by manipulating the word to say what I wanted it to say, so I can feel good about the bitter unforgiveness OTHER PEOPLE convinced me was in my heart. I would angrily proclaim my beliefs backed with scripture and dare anyone to challenge me….I even blogged about it in a blog not too different from this one… but here is the thing. While that argument for my “beliefs” was pretty convincing, there were a few places in the word that would make it a little wobbly. Like that whole “Love they neighbor” thing and the “Forgive and you shall be forgiven”. The kicker is, I wasn’t really in unforgiveness… I had forgiven the person, but it seemed like everyone else believed that if we forgive someone, then we go back to the relationship that we once had…and this person had a long history of hurting me so I wasn’t willing to do that. She was the type that knew you were supposed to turn the other cheek and made plans to slap the other cheek even harder. She was also a professing Christian and would say things like, she got saved and doesn’t need to worry about going to hell anymore. In my mind, God had never called me to be in an abusive situation, so there had to be a way out biblically. Everyone else had convinced me that me not wanting to have them in my life was the same as not forgiving them. This person was clever and rarely allowed her true self to come out in front of other people…. in front of them she was a fun, loving person. So when I cut her out of my life because of something she did that everyone saw, to them, it was the first mistake she had made, and I was being hard and unforgiving in their eyes. I wanted to tell other people what was really going on, but God prompted me not to gossip even when she was openly disparaging my reputation. It put me in a position that I needed to find a way to stay safe and have a relationship with God. So, I created a belief to allow that… and in so doing I created a PSEUDO- SALVATION PLAN. My intentions were not to depart from the faith, they were to take care of a situation using my own rational skills that would allow me not to have a relationship with this abusive person AND remove any shame all those people who were saying I had to restore the relationship with the person and go back to the way we were to be a Christian. By creating the doctrine … or as I thought I was doing, finding the loophole in the blanket forgiveness doctrine… I would keep my standing with God, ease my shame and keep the abuser out of my life. AND HERE IS WHERE IT WENT WRONG.

Like I said, I had forgiven the person….I had zero desire to get even… I did at first, but I worked through that, I just wanted them away from me because of the abuse. I forgave them because I realized how they became the way they were, I feel sorry about that for them, but I simply could not be in their life since for over 2 decades doing so subjected me to destabilizing abuse. Other people who knew both of us thought I was being unreasonable because I never shared with them what she was doing to me… I was trying so hard to show this woman that I loved her and had good intentions for her and wanted to be friends… so with that hope, I kept all the mean and spiteful things she did to me and my family to myself…hoping she would come around one day. This seemed to encourage even more abusive behavior. Other people, in their ignorance of what was really going on, viewed me as having a very unforgiving spirit and a short fuse. I felt trapped and instead of seeking God about this situation, I handled it… badly. I used scripture to justify not having her in my life and not having to even forgive her for what she was doing… and of course the scripture doesn’t teach that. I was moving in my wounds and not in my faith, and lost my way. I knew it the whole time because my spirit man felt wrong… I just felt bad.

God is merciful though, he patiently through the Holy Spirit dealt with me and restored me to him by correcting my beliefs….and even by healing my wounds BECAUSE I YIELDED TO THE CALL. Here is the kicker… had I instead started praying in faith to God to solve the problem and to show me what to do, he would have given me his out for this situation… the one he provided… the perfect solution for the situation.

So, my takeaway is this… We need to always seek God in the purest of heart, asking in all honestly for him to guide us in all truth… desiring to be righteous before God more than being righteous before men. And God will honor that… God will guide us in all truth by the Holy Spirit as long as we submit to his correction…. we need to remain humble… to know without a doubt that it is by the grace of God, through Faith in the Blood of Jesus…. that we are redeemed.