What happened to me?
After my radical encounter with Jesus in August of 1979, I felt as if I needed to know what had happened to me. "Feel" is not a very accurate term to use here, but I knew that I did feel different. I knew something had happened. I knew I had an encounter with the Creator, with Jesus. I knew that the Bible was 100% accurate and that God had inspired the writing of it. That is about all I knew. When Jesus reveals Himself to you through His Word and by the power of the Holy Spirit upon you, the result is a knowing that passes all understanding. Encountering Jesus as I did cannot be described it must be experienced.
I was totally "un-churched," therefore I had no doctrines to "un-learn," no denominational barriers to overcome and virtually no prejudices at all. I was totally open and was a spiritual sponge.
I had the luxury of being able to stay home the first week after my encounter so that I could read the New Testament. I found a copy (a youth edition) that had been given to me years before. I read it for four to five hours every day. I filled up yellow note pads with questions about what I was reading. There was so much I did not understand.
I remember going to a local church after two weeks of reading the Bible and telling the pastor, "God has saved me!" While I was speaking I was trembling and weeping uncontrollably. I am not sure what he thought. I even shocked myself because I did not know what "saved" meant. I knew he was shocked and he had very few answers for me.
I would take my yellow pad to this minister every Tuesday and sit in his office drilling him with my questions He was able to answer some of them, but not others. He was a nice guy and I thank God for him!
I am writing this chapter to help you understand what has happened to you if Jesus has become your Lord.
First, I want to lay the foundation that our life with God is not a religion but a relationship. Relationships can best be defined between the two parties relating. Therefore, I want to state that while there are no shortcuts for developing your own personal relationship with Jesus, I hope that what I have discovered will assist you in speeding up that process and cause it to bloom and bear fruit as soon as possible.
Jesus defines His relationship with us as the closest that two beings can have: "I am the Vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). There is nothing closer than a grapevine and its branch. The very life of the vine sustains the branch, and the vine cannot bear fruit without the branch. They depend on one another. It is a oneness. Read the rest of John 15 to get a real revelation of this.
The first month of my knowing the Lord, I heard an evangelist say, "Jesus is my best friend. He is more real to me than my best friend on earth." That statement made me hungry. I told God that if this man could have that so could I. I asked Him for it. We are promised this in 2 Corinthians 13:14 which says, "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen." This has been my experience since 1979. Praise God for that!
If you have encountered God and have made Jesus Lord, you have experienced the greatest miracle that can ever happen to a person. You have experienced death and re-birth! You may say, "It does not appear that I have died and have been reborn." That is because there was an invisible and eternal transaction that took place; nevertheless, it was more real than if it had been physical.
Jesus told Nicodemus, "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). We cannot see the wind with our eyes but we can discern it with other senses. We can see the effect it has. You have new life inside of you now and you will be able to discern the effects of it.
Death and rebirth. "Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God" (Romans 6:3-10).
This principle can be compared to generations in the natural. You were inside of your father and your mother even before you were born. If your father had died [prematurely], you would have never been born. In effect, you died with him. However, if by some supernatural miracle your father would have died and been resurrected into a new type of person, you would have also inherited that entire process. So, when you were born, you would have picked up all of your father’s history of death and re-birth.
Titus 3:5 states that we experience the new birth (regeneration) by two things; the Holy Spirit and the Word of Truth. The Word of God is a seed. Read Mark chapter 4. When you hear the Word of God and receive it, it explodes in your spirit as a seed explodes in the soil. "Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the living word of God, and abiding forever" (1 Peter 1:23).
The young teenager Mary, the mother of Jesus, received the Word of God from the mouth of an angel and she conceived Jesus in the flesh. We receive the Word of God and we conceive Jesus in our spirit.
When we were reborn or regenerated we inherited a new Father. We changed our race.
W.E. Vine Bible Dictionary defines the Greek word (one of the two definitions) "Father" as "Pater," from a root signifying a nourisher, protector, upholder, the nearest ancestor, the progenitor of the race of people; the originator of a family or company of persons animated by the same spirit as himself. Regeneration is from two words: "palin" means again, and "genesis" means birth. Palingenis or regeneration is actually changing who your Father is.
We changed our race. We needed a new progenitor. We needed an originator of a family or company of persons animated by the same spirit as himself. When I saw that explanation in the W.E. Vine Bible Dictionary, I got excited. If God becomes our Pater, then through the insertion of His Spirit into our body His Spirit animates us. That changes our race, our inheritance, our lot in life, what we have coming, our very nature. The world thought it was amazing when in the 1960s, in South Africa, a man actually received a heart transplant. What would they have thought if they had known of a LIFE TRANSPLANT?
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no-one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9). Get this set firmly in your mind. You did nothing to merit the wonderful gift that God has granted to you. No person could be good enough to merit new life. It is strictly a gift. You are no better than your unsaved neighbor or relative. You did not deserve this gift. Grace is receiving something that you did not earn.
So how does this happen?
God set up the Universe so that life is in the blood. "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life" (Leviticus 17:11). Blood covenants exchange the very life of the parties involved. Jesus and you "drank each other’s blood" and exchanged races. He did the drinking of your blood in the Garden of Gethsemene when He took your sin onto Himself, and He poured out His blood voluntarily at Golgotha on the Cross.
You "drink" His blood when you partake of and receive The Word of the Covenant. Fortunately, our new birth does not require you to physically drink blood (the Bible forbids that). "It is the Spirit that makes alive, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and are life" (John 6:63). So it is the Word of God that is the transfer agent for the blood covenant.
What a deal! Jesus got your race and you got His. That is why His virgin birth took place. One’s blood is inherited from his father. Jesus’ Father is God Himself. He received God’s blood just like Adam did. Jesus is the last Adam.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17). The word used here for "new creation" actually means a species of beings that never existed before. This is not like a new model of an old automobile line, but rather it is like a new brand of automobile that never existed before.
What about the time factor?
We were not there 2000 years ago when Jesus shed His blood.
One very important factor to always keep in mind when pondering the things of God is that He lives in eternity. Eternity is not a long time, it transcends time. God has multiple time dimensions. We have only one time dimension. God has multiple space dimensions and we have only three. God is in the past, present and future all at the same time. Therefore, it does not matter what time you live in, the eternal Spirit of God takes you back to that day when Jesus was tortured to death on the Cross of Calvary.
One Scripture that illustrates this is Hebrews 9:14 which says, "How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!"
You can therefore agree with the Scripture that says, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
If you have been worshiping ancestral or other spirits, you have discovered an element of truth. The spirit world is real. Spirits do animate themselves to appear active in your life. Now your challenge is to change your family by the Blood Covenant so that you inherit the things of God, the Creator. God wants to bless you! The best that the "other gods" can do for you is to bring a curse into your life. "Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, Nor take up their names on my lips" (Psalms 16:4).
What advantages do we receive?
The greatest and most important advantage is that you now have eternal life. You will spend eternity with God in Heaven and you will not have to experience separation from God, which is called Hell. The greatest enemy of mankind that has been defeated in your life is death! Everybody lives forever somewhere. As a believer and a new creation you will live forever in Heaven.
"Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies’" (John 11:25).
"For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:40).
"Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:1-3).
Eternal life, however, is more than living forever. John 17:3 describes eternal life as a quality of life to experience even while you are living on earth. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3). The word "know" is an important word. It carries with it the idea of intimacy. We can have intimacy with God not only after we die, but especially now while we are still living on earth.
"Jesus, I want to tell You how much I appreciate the gift you have given to me. Thank You, so much, for giving me a brand new life, a life transplant. Thank You for giving me the Holy Spirit. Thank You for making it possible for You and me to have an intimate relationship like the vine and the branch. Thank You for the price that You were willing to pay for me to have this gift. Thank You for the extravagant love that You have poured out on me, letting me know my real worth and that I am valuable. Jesus, I want to return the love by totally giving all of myself to You."
Now listen for His voice.
"Hello there, my Name is Jesus. I love you."
Who is this God who you have met?
If one filled up all of the books in the world there would still not be enough room to describe God. No human being could possibly describe God. Men have tried, but that is arrogance because God created them. A creature cannot describe his/her creator.
God does reveal important things to us about Himself. We need to know, however, that He never stops revealing Himself and He never will. There is always something new to learn about Him. We learn about Him through having fellowship with Him, one on one.
There are some things I can begin to describe to give you a jump-start. After you read these, take them to prayer and ask God to reveal Himself to you personally.
The first thing we need to know about God is that He is the Creator! When I first met Jesus back in 1979, I used to tell people that I had met the God who created the universe! I used to make sure that I stated it that way. There can be many "other gods." Mankind has done a good job of making gods in his image. But there is only one Creator! The Creator is the One you have met.
Not only is He the Creator, but by Him, all things still exist and are held together.
Colossians 1:16-17 says, "For all things were created by Him, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist."
Hebrews 11:3 says, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
Hebrews 1:2&3b (Amplified Bible) says, "But in these last days He has spoken to us in the person of a Son, Whom He appointed Heir and lawful Owner of all things, also by and through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space and the ages of time, that is, He made, produced, built, operated and arranged them in order. [Verse 3b]… upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power."
Here are some other attributes of God. Certainly they are not complete or exhaustive, but they are a place to begin. I strongly suggest that you look up these Scriptures in your own Bible and ask God to speak to you Himself. When He speaks to you, doubt flees!
1. He is uncreated and eternal. (John 1:1-3 and Genesis 21:33)
2. He is all-powerful. (Luke 1:37)
3. He is all knowing. (Ps. 147:5)
4. He is ever present. (Jer. 23:23-24)
5. He is a spiritual being. (John 4:24)
6. He is triune, three persons in one. God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 3:16-17, John 1:1-14, 14:9-20)
I remember struggling with this idea the first month I knew the Lord. All of a sudden, one day I just knew. My questions ceased. There is a good lesson in the ISOB curriculum about the Trinity. It covers subjects like, "Why does God need to be a Trinity?"
The Trinity is a concept that cannot be grasped by the human mind by itself. God must reveal it to you personally. We do not have three separate Gods; but each aspect of God has different functions. The Father conceives the thoughts and plans, Jesus is the Word that speaks them, and the Holy Spirit is the One Who carries out the orders. Jesus is also God’s Son. Jesus became a human being and took our sins and our sin nature to the Cross for us.
I understand why unbelievers cannot believe the idea of the Trinity. I have received criticism from Mormons and others for believing this truth. However, if you are really ready for the truth, just ask God, then stand back, and watch Him speak to you.
7. He is infinite. (Isaiah 40:12-13)
8. His nature is love. (Ephesians 2:1-7, 1 John 3:1, 1 John 4:9-10)
God does not have love, He IS love. God loves us with an unconditional love. His love does not depend upon how good or bad we are. While we were dead in sins, He loved us. A dead man cannot do anything but receive life! Humans love with conditions. For example, "If you are good enough, or do what I tell you, then I will love you." Not God! He loves just because He IS love. That is called AGAPE, meaning unconditional love.
9. His character is the fruit of the Sprit described in Galatians 5:22-23 which says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."
10. He never changes. His emotions do not run hot and cold like human emotions. (Hebrews 13:8)
James 1:17 describes a sundial shadow that turns as the sun moves during the day. But James says that with Jesus, there is NO shadow of turning. In other words, He is always shining like high noon! You can depend upon Him.
11. Jesus is the Word. Jesus is also God Himself. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men" (John 1:1-2). "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
This is the dividing line between Christianity and everything else: Jesus is all God and all man. He is God manifested as His creation, man. If you are not ready for this yet, just be honest with God and He will reveal Himself to you.
12. Jesus was born of a virgin. (Luke 1:26-38) Romans 1:3-4 states that: "regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God, by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord." Can you imagine asking the teenager Jesus, who are your parents? Jesus might say, "Well you see on my mamma’s side, I am from the family of David, but on my Dad’s side, well, I AM."
13. The Holy Spirit is God. (John 14:16-23, John 16:7-15)
14. Best of all, God is love! He cares about you more than you care about yourself, more than your parents and family care about you.
15. God lives in eternity and not in time. Eternity is not a long time, rather it transcends time. God knows the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning.
16. God cannot be defeated by His enemies, nor by our enemies. Sometimes, when we look at this world and our lives we wonder if God is really in control. We might say, "If God is in control, then why is there so much suffering?" Or, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" "Now that I am a Christian, why is my life not getting better?"
Psalm 1:1-4 says, "Why do the nations rage, and the peoples meditate on a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers plot together, against the LORD and against His anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bands in two and cast away their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the LORD shall mock at them."
One of the most difficult things for many people to believe is that God is really in control of the world and our lives. The bad things that happen in this world do not occur because God is hitting the control button that says "bad." Bad things happen because God gave humans a free will that He will not violate. However, look at the Scripture above in Psalms 1:1-4. Also, look at Romans 8:28 which says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." If Jesus is your Lord, then even the "bad things" will work to your benefit.
Even evil people and demons who are God’s enemies are working His plan for Him. Psalm 33:10 says, "The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He breaks the plots of the people. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations."
If you are still having a hard time with this idea, just remember we live on a planet that is at war. God gave control of Earth to Adam and Adam gave his authority to God’s enemy Satan. Jesus came to earth and established a "beachhead" or a foothold against the enemy to redeem mankind and the earth. The Church is now called to extend that victory to the world. Actually, Jesus won the victory at the Cross, and we have the victory spiritually, but it is up to us to extend it to our realm of influence. God has ultimate sovereignty in history past and future. However man has a degree of sovereignty now due to his free will which God will not violate. That is why there is still suffering and pain in the world today. One day, this earth will be renewed and suffering will end for God’s children. If we go to be with the Lord before that time, that is when our suffering will end. The unbelievers will have no end to suffering!
17. God is the Word, and we can trust it (Him). If there is one thing The Word of God dares to do that no other book in the world does, it is to accurately predict the future. I have studied the Bible with vigor since 1979 and know that it is perfect. I do not claim to understand it all, but it is perfect. I have studied Bible prophecy intensely. It is obvious that God inspired the Bible and that it is perfect. Bible prophecy proves its perfection by providing evidence that cannot be refuted. The only reason people do not believe the evidence is because it would demand that they call Jesus their Lord, and so many are not willing to do so.
Chapter 9 in this book will go into more detail about Bible prophecy, which proves beyond doubt that God inspired every word in the Bible and that it is perfect.
18. God can be known personally. Most religions and even many Christian denominations do not believe that God can actually speak to and be heard by man. They do not believe that God can be their best friend. God wants to have fellowship with us. His heart aches to have conversations with us. Jesus describes eternal life as knowing God. That word "know" means the closest form of fellowship and intimacy. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3).
Who is Jesus Now?
It would be impossible to fully answer this question. The Book of Hebrews, Ephesians, Revelation and others give us some answers and allow us to peek into Heaven.
In Revelation chapter 1 John sees who Jesus is now! He is different from the last time he saw Him. He is the ascended Christ revealed! He is revealed as the faithful, trustworthy witness, the firstborn of the dead, the Prince of the Kings of the Earth, the soon coming One, the Alpha and Omega, the first and last, and the Almighty Omnipotent One!
Remember that Jesus was God manifested in a human body. He was all God, yet all man! When He was killed, He actually died. However, since He was sinless, Hell had no claims on Him. Therefore God the Father resurrected Him. When He was raised from the dead He was re-born as a new creation, yet still human (a different kind of human) and still God, the Creator. Jesus is now in Heaven ruling the universe. He is still all God, yet all man!
He is more than the ruler. He is our advocate, or to put it another way, our lawyer who is there to make sure we receive our inheritance. There are many names given to His functions like intercessor, advocate, high priest, etc.; however, the easiest thing to remember is that He wants us to receive our inheritance both here on Earth and in Heaven, and He will ensure that happens.
He walks through the fires and trials of life with us. He comforts and encourages us. This is all done through the Holy Spirit who He sent to take His place.
As we face the results of sin, (not only our sin, but also the curses passed down by our forefathers going all the way back to Adam), Jesus is there to take the real penalty of them for us. As the scrolls of our lives unfurl, He does not always take the bad circumstances away, but He will always take the harmful things out of the bad circumstances. He not only took our curses 2,000 years ago, but He is on task to get rid of what is left of them that still attempt to harm us.
He is the soon coming King. If there is one thing that Jesus promised over and over it was that He is coming back to earth some day. He did not tell us the time and date, but He made His second coming a certainty.
"According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep" (1 Thessalonians 4:15).
"‘Yes, it is as you say,’ Jesus replied. ‘But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.’" (Matthew 26:64).
"‘Men of Galilee,’ they [the angels] said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven’" (Acts 1:11).