My Testimony

Some may know me well, some may know me not so well, either way, I think my testimony speaks very heavily and directly to many a person who has been raised in a Christian home. I pray that I may state what the Lord has done in my life in a way that causes you to turn to the Lord Jesus in true repentance and faith.

I was born and raised in maybe the strongest christian home I know. Three siblings who all pretty much got along incredibly well; two parents totally dedicated to raising their children in the way of the Lord the best they knew how, always willing to sacrifice all for us and always willing to teach and correct us in love. When I was 6 I began to attend a very, very strong Christian school that was and still is the most Christian 'Christian' school you'll find for 1st through 8th graders. In it, we read the bible literally everyday and were consistently taught the great truths of the Word of God. Before Christmas of my 6th year of life, our family sat down for an advent meeting; my father read a passage from Luke, I can't point to what the passage was exactly, but I know I was scared for the first time in my life for my soul. I went by my parents bed and lead by my parents I prayed what I guess is known as the 'sinners prayer'... I was not saved that day, and I know that only know looking back after 16 years of thinking I was. The words were all right, the intentions of my parent were right (although maybe a little bit to impatient to see their first son brought into the redeeming love of their Savior), but my heart was not changed and I certainly did not know what it actually meant to be transformed in my heart to serve the Lord Jesus Christ at that age. There was no counting the cost in my life nor desire to follow after Christ with all my heart, picking up my cross to follow Him.

Throughout most of my younger years, I certainly was the picture of a good Christian kid in many ways on the outside. I wanted to always please those in superior to me, I always wanted the favor of everyone around me, and the best way to have favor with people in a Christian community is to be a respectful, nice kid. In third grade I won the character award for my grade; I couldn't have been any happier. I knew this award meant that everyone thought I was such a great kid, my parents were extremely pleased, and I was all ecstatic to have some visible relic of the thing I desired more than anything else, the favor of men. However, when I was handed the award, someone told me: "Character is who you are when no one is looking." This began to weigh heavily on my heart, and I don't think it ever stopped weighing on my heart. For the first time in my life, I think I was convicted of my sin. Being the good Christian kid I was, this sin lay in the secret place, this fatality was right in my heart. When no one was looking, I was not obedient to my parents. When no one was looking, I was addicted to playing video games when my parents told me I could not. When no one was looking, I was indulging myself in all the things I was told not to. But on the outside, I was just a good a Christian kid.

1Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees;for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

This was the ultimate reality of my life all the way up to my senior year in HS. I kept living and looking great to all those around me. I was smart, quick to understand God, and what He wanted and asks of us in the Bible, quick to assent to the belief in God in my mind, but none of it was in my heart. I suppressed the truth that my heart was as wicked as any murderer or adulterer, I suppressed the truth that I was entirely inclined to do none of the things God would have me do when I was out of sight of all other men. I served a god who I had created and formed in my head and in some crazy, blind way thought I served and lived for. I will tell you one thing I know about my human nature... My heart and mind are the greatest deceivers I have ever known. Satan has a hold on many a mind splitting the mind and heart, letting the mind believe God and serve Him, while keeping the heart utterly holding onto salvation in themselves, the love of the world and all that crucified Christ. What a terrible place to be in! Convinced thoroughly in your head that you have all that Christianity has to offer, but having a greater poverty of heart and soul than could ever be imagined.

Before my senior year in HS, I had one of the main idols in my heart rooted out. I loved playing sports, it was almost my entire identity in HS. I played 4 sports between my SO and JR year in HS, but before my SR year, I tore my acl in the third football practice of the year. All those things that I spent my time doing were taken away, and I was left to the loneliness and poverty of my heart for the first time. During those 6 months of recovery, the wretchedness of my sin-filled heart became more and more evident. Addiction to terrible things started to creep into my life, un-wanted and un-desired, but sin has a way of completely turning a man against himself... I believe without God and His sovereign grace, we are absolutely self-destructive, and I was certainly beginning to see this then. Half way into my senior year, I began for the first time in my life to actually search the Scriptures for myself. Starting in Proverbs 1, I began to actually read the bible for an answer. At Proverbs 23:26, I stopped: "My son, give me your heart and let your eyes follow my ways." That verse cut me to my heart, I wept several nights over reading that verse. I knew something was desperately wrong with my heart, but I had no idea how to give my heart to God. The truth was and is that most of the American 'church' has no idea what this means. I was duped into thinking I was as Christian as I possibly could be; no one told me that Christ required an entire repentance, turning from loving all the things that I love in this world to Christ. I thought slowly but surely I would just grow up in this Christian life as I slowly 'matured' in my walk. But not understanding and being blinded to the fact, that in Christ, I have my very life. Why are we so quick to gloss over Christ and His cross? This is everything. As a SR. in HS,I was convicted of my heart full of sin, but despite growing up in a bible-teaching church and home, no one was able to lead me to Christ. No one was willing to tell me that I actually needed to repent and be born of the Spirit, no one was willing to stand up and question my assurance of salvation despite the fact that the only assurance we are to have of Salvation is supposed to come from God and His Spirit testifying with our Spirit and our lives reflecting His work in us.

Why are we so quick to soften, yea even counter act the reproofs of the scriptures? I pray that we all look at the consequences of not hearing the reproofs of the word of God listed in Proverbs 1:24-33... "How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you."(Proverbs 1:23-24) Read on! These are our eternal souls we are dealing with, it is foolish not to think and ponder over these things.

I went on, thinking that in being sincere about sin with others, sincere about who I was, maybe I could figure this out. My life did not change one bit, I slowly slipped back into my comfortable 'Christian' life. By the time I went to college, I was excited about the opportunity to serve my god in college. I had even gone to China and back to share this god of mine with others, I thought I was starting to discover and get closer to God, but when I got alone, I was still desperately alone. I was empty. I was in complete denial of God in my heart, even though my head believed otherwise. In college, sincerely I pursued this god I had known in my head. I tried to read my bible, I tried to go out and pray. All the time living in sin, living in addiction to some terrible things. Proclaiming and professing Christ, while holding on with all my heart to so many things that I loved in this world. I did not want to go out and get drunk, but I certainly was not seeking God with all my heart, which is a prerequisite to finding God according to Jeremiah. I was a walking hypocrite, calling myself a follower of Christ, but having no cross to carry.

By the beginning of my Sophomore year of college, I was again confronted with my hypocrisy. Again, thinking I was still a Christian, I said to myself: "well, I will follow God, but I still want to have a girlfriend, popularity, and success and honor in men's eyes." This is utterly contrary to what the word of God teaches a follower of Christ should be, but every voice I heard that was a part of Christianity absolutely affirmed me, maybe subtly, but definitely affirmed me in my 'balanced' approach to my walk in Christ. It was not a matter of doing things, giving stuff away, even praying or reading my bible, no it went much deeper. I did all those things, I went on the mission trips, went to a Bible-preaching church, even did alot to defend my faith, read books, gave money and time to help people out... But deep in my heart, I was desperately addicted to this world, sin, self-righteousness, Christ was far from my heart. Its amazing to me, looking back on it, that I could think so absolutely little about Jesus Christ and still call myself a Christian. If we are not completely enamoured with Him and Him alone, we have missed Him; He is our very life if we are actually in Christ, "For you have died and your life is hid in Christ."

After a year of seeking self-gratification while giving total mental assent to the Lordship of Jesus in my life, I came to crashing, face-planting, halt at the end of my sophomore year. Everything fell apart, I was lost, broken, everything that I had made my idol ahead of Jesus was rent out of my life in violent succession. Yet, still, I had absolutely no inclination that Christ was not the center of my life, I had no idea that I had absolutely missed Jesus somehow after 20 years of hearing Him preached and taught by everything I was around. How is this possible? I am certainly foolish, but I have a hard time believing that someone did not soften the sword of the Word of God along the way when telling me about it. I fear more than anything, that I was no different at that time in my life than literally everyone I found myself around. Some people lived differently than I did, but there was no one who I knew that consumed themselves with Christ. The biggest and deepest roots of my heart at this point in my life were very literally ripped out, my heart lay open, oozing with self-pity, depression, and all kinds of stuff. I am sure many have known the sorrow of the heart when you realize that many of the pillars and pleasure you built your life on in this world were swiftly and easily knocked out from under you; what a terrible stat many of us live in!

I spent the next 6 or 7 months in state of some depression and some anguish, still living in terrible sin but unaware of the consequences of it. Total depravity had not quite set into control my life, but I was teetering on the edge. Everyone has their own secret sins if they know not Christ in their heart, mine began with laziness and spread into all kinds of addiction and up until the second semester of my JR year, I actually thought they were not that big of a deal, mostly because no one knew about them, or at least how bad they were. Finally, after not turning at all the rebukes and convictions that the Lord had sent my way over 4 years, I fell extremely hard on my face into a terrible addiction to gambling my second semester of my JR year (Spring of 2008). It began in laziness, luke-warmness, but in God's good mercy, He let me fall, fall and fall.

I don't even wanna tell you the depths to which I fell, the shame and desperation of a wicked heart is unbelievable. I fell and fell until a year later, after spending a semester out of school because of this addiction and many other spawns from it, I met someone who literally for the first time in my life showed me a different way. Somehow, after all this, I still thought of myself as a Christian, do you see the deceitfulness of the human heart? We are not saved by grace through faith to live in continual addiction and self-destructive behaviour in complete defiance to God, but instead to do the good works that God has prepared for us in advance. Christmas of 2008 I met a man who not just in word, but maybe even more so in earnestness and passion of heart showed me that there was much, much more to the Christian faith than I had been living out in my heart. From that day, I began to question my own salvation, sometimes not really worried about it, but still it was in my mind. "What this person has and what I have are absolutely, completely different, yet I call myself a Christian just like him." I began to listen to some salty preaching that my sister had given me, and although I was not convicted of just how desperately I needed Christ, I definitely started to see that I had certainly missed something growing up in this 'Christian' world that I had grown up in.

For the next half year or so, God began to lead me to a place where He could meet me. I was no different in regards to my sin, but God put me in a place where I was somewhat insulated from the devastating, numbing reality of a completely tossed away life, around godly people who were pursuing the Lord. Slowly but surely, I felt my heart being tugged away from the desperate hole that I had dug myself into. The life of self-destruction and sin was becoming more and more vile to me, yet, I was still stuck desperately in it. I tried and tried to resist the addictive nature and the sin that so easily beset me, but no power in me could do anything to stop it... Just as no power in me could crucify myself on a cross, I could not rid myself of the dead and sin filled me. One week, I became desperate. I said I was sick, but I was simply just sick of my soul and self. I saw in the trueness of light maybe just a glimpse of my heart and saw how desperately sick I was, the incurable sickness of death and sin was completely filling my heart. The addiction and sin was there in abundance, and the realization came to me how much God hated it. I was doing terrible things right in front of His eyes. Have you ever realized this? His law is holy and just, yet we are all transgressors of it. He cannot take us as we are, we are wretched, sinful, haters of God. I became fearful of God that week...

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.

On that Sunday, I came home from church completely broken. Got on my computer and watched a sermon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiZkicY0qj8
Maybe one of the simplest sermons you will find, just one godly man quoting word for word the sermon on the mount. The sermon on the mount has a couple of purposes, but maybe more than anything else, it is there to expound on the law of God and make it so that every man is absolutely, unequivocally condemned under it. for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. I was killed that day, completely utterly cut off from any hope of overcoming and saving myself. There is no way to describe to you what happened to me that day, but I know, I died with Christ on the cross. God took me as I totally and utterly repented and put me in with Christ so that I died. I died so that I could be raised in the newness of life. I died so that Christ could live in me and through me. I died, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth 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. I died so that I could live!

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.


Faith in Jesus Christ puts us into Christ. If our life is not radically different, if we do not have a hatred for sin, if we are not new creatures, then I have to ask, have we actually be born again? Its a terrible thing to miss one of the very first things Christ tells us in the Gospel of John. I hope we actually understand what it means to come to true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, otherwise, all righteousness is as filthy rags before God, all our trying will get us no where and all the proclamations of preachers will do us no good. The Gospel is the be all and end all of our hope and life, if we have not really received and taken into our hearts, we have no life.

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (2 Corinthians 13:5) A great sermon on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky8dTyPpiAo

Do not trust in a prayer you prayed in 2nd grade. For: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)

Ask yourself this simple question: Is Jesus precious to you? Unto you therefore which believe He is precious
Do you look to Him for your life? Is your life filled with Him, desiring His will and His holiness in your life? I pray that we fail not to search our own soul and lives to see if we really are in Faith.

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)

The Gospel of Trying vs. the Gospel of Dying

There is so much hustle to change the Church. The Church needs reviving, everyone who is honest with themselves can see that. The World looks at us and mocks us for our complete lack of power and ability to affect real change. The question always must be asked, are we the light and salt Christ commanded us to be?



Well, I would and most other honest confessing believers would say "NO way."



Those with an active mindset and a desperate desire to make this Church relevant today are doing everything they can to make it so. We have certainly seen the problems and know without a shadow of a doubt, this church must be revived... I see it and hear it everywhere: "Be the hands and feet of Jesus! Feed the poor and help the homeless! Do Justice and good to those in need! Dress trendy and sleak and listen to cool music! Read this new book about what this person did! Hear this story and get motivated to help those in need!" Now this is juxtaposed against what we have seen said in the church for 40 or so years in the fundamental churches in America: "Read your bible everday! Do your devotions! Go to bible study and church every week! Read this new book about growing in your faith!" And to those of us who have grown up in this church and have at some point or another had a serious falling away moment (I did) we hear: "You need to get back on track, Here is a really good book that helped me when I got down, You need to make God more a part of your life and so on..."

So many of these things are truly great things. So many of them have helped countless people and many of the people that have pursued these things do so with pure hearts and a desire to serve the Lord. But even more than the many are those who are simply blinded, herded, and swayed by all these noises. All these noises coming right out of the most Christian of all Christian places. The place on this earth that is more saturated with the Gospel and the Bible than any other place. We run to and fro looking for the answer to a dead church and more importantly our dead souls. We are so easily distracted and we are so quick to put a salve on our bleeding souls as we slowly blind ourselves with the next new thing the world or our so called Christian culture comes up with. We are in the business of doing and trying. Doing this good thing, doing this new class, giving to this great cause, reading this inspiring book, hear this great preacher, read this new translation of the bible, Go to this great church... Oh let us do and read and hear and go all around and about ourselves. Let us save ourselves from the religious deadness, moral decadance, brokeness, and spiritual impitence of this world; let us, for Christ's sake!

But Christ says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Stop all this doing and trying!

The reality is that in all the scrambling, we have long forgotten what it truly means to come to Christ. What does it mean that we are heavy laden? So often we consider we are heavy laden by this world, by our bad sins, by the struggles and troubles of our families and jobs, but what the essential burden we bear is ourselves. We bear the burden of absolute slavery to ourselves and our own desires, wants, hidden lusts, contriving and striving natures. The call of Christ has always been and will always be this: "If you would come after me, you must deny self, hate the world, serve only me, and come die"... The power and truest form of the gospel lies in not just the salvation and imputing of righteousness to ourselves, but even more the very death of ourselves on that cross with Christ and the very ressurection of ourselves in the power and quickening of the Holy Spirit upon that death... There is simply no other true motivation in the Gospel to do anything good outside of this... What is it that Paul speaks so strongly about in chapter six of romans? You have died! You who have come to the cross of Christ for salvation have and must reckon yourselves dead to the old flesh! No one wants to hear that. No one wants to pick up this cross and go outside the city at the scorn of all those around them, even many within our Christian culture, and crucify themselves! This is pure folly to this world...

I will tell you, this dying does not take place just once, it must take place continously if we are to grow at all in Christ. There is no dying to found in a book, no dying to be found in a good speaker, no dying to be found in giving money or time to the poor (although seeing brokeness and not running from it is a good start to see your own broken selves)... Death to self takes place all by your lonesome; in the quite and stillness of your own time as you see within you a heart that condemns you before the holiness of God and you begin to earnestly, and I mean earnestly, cry out before the Lord as John Donne did in his poem "Batter My Heart":

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Romans 8

Read the whole book for yourself, Romans is said to be the best book to understand the true Gospel of Christ. I do not disagree, but you should read it all for yourself and see what is to be found in it to know what it looks like to come to 1.) A knowledge of your sinfulness and complete wretchedness when you are apart from God, rejecting the knowledge of him 2.) to be totally and completely justified by grace through faith 3.) what it means to be justified and born again by grace, or regenerated through the death and then resurrection of Christ... then so on.

Romans 8 is certainly one of my favorite books and I think the heart of it gets looked over by many of us, but it almost exclusively talks about what it means to have the Spirit of God and what it looks like. Starting with verse 1:

"There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."

Some translations may not have the end of that verse, but I think thats a shame as it simply puts what the next 20 verses or so back up. For what its worth, the majority of Greek transcripts have it. Anyways, its interesting how we can read the first part of this verse and then not read what the condition is or how that actually plays out in real life. "Who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit". So, you have no condemnation if you are in Christ, for those who are in Christ walk according to the Spirit... and backing this up: "So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (vs. 8). "BUT, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness." (vs 9, 10)... There are several if statements as if Paul is questioning us, is the Spirit of God in you? He is not letting us just simply say we are in Christ, but rather is he really in us? Because if the Spirit of God is really in you, there is a difference...

Verse 11: "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." So if we have been truly saved, we have life through His Spirit. If we have come to true repentance, we no longer are slaves to our sins in this mortal body. There is a profound difference between the unregenerate, unsaved heart and the regenerate, saved, Holy Ghost filled heart. If you do not see it in your heart, what assurance do you have? "For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God." (1 John 3:20, 21). This is not about works or about doing things just to have assurance, but way more profound than that. Is your heart enraptured and captured by Christ? Is it your goal in life to grow in the knowledge (way more than just head knowledge) of Christ and God? John 17:3 says "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." The word 'know' used in the greek here can mean to be interwoven with... I like to think of it as Ser vs. Conocer used in Spanish... Ser being to know someone personally and conocer to just know about someone. We must know God in a very real sense. Do you love the Lord God with all your heart, mind and soul? This is the very first and greatest commandment of Christ, if we do not know God, how can we love God? There is so much to be said about this, but read the Book, read it for yourself.

To go on in Romans 8:12-13, "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors- not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Is this a reality in your life? Are you overcoming the deeds of the body, are you putting to death sin in your life by the grace of God in the power of the Spirit within you? This is a very serious question as Paul explicitly says that those who "live according to the flesh... will die"... Meaning will not see eternal life. One of my favorite sayings about salvation comes from, I believe, Leonard Ravenhill: "So your saved? Saved from what? Lust, greed, idolatry, and so on." If you are by the grace of God, one of the "sons of God" led by the Spirit as vs. 14 goes on to say, then you will overcome some sin in your life in this present age. If you are not overcoming some sin that was present in your life before you were said to have been saved, how can you say that you were saved according to this passage? How can you say that the power of an Almighty God can not work some form of redemption to righteousness in your present body? If by grace, His Spirit is given to you in this mortal body, He does not give it to us in vain. His intention is to bring us to a right reflection of His holiness (2 Cor. 3:18)... And since when, especially if you hold to the doctrines of Grace and some form of Calvinisim, has God's will been suddenly undone in this generation of 'saved' saints? How have we lost this notion?

So I am very tired of writing now, but I do not think this is even the tip of the iceberg on this. Anyways, here are some sermons if you want to look at this further and then go, read the Bible for yourself. The true knowledge of God is usually found in the secret place: "...pray to your Father who is in the secret places" (Matthew 6:6). The Lord is Spirit and he is everywhere, but often only when you get alone, away from distractions can you really focus your whole heart on Him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhJdYcY_2g&feature=PlayList&p=26EEF742A13B5AF3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=14

One of my favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKnr9D4JoDU

So, Salvation...

Sometimes I wonder why so many in the Christian culture of America simply do not talk about there moment of salvation. Is there anything more powerful and more telling of the power, love, grace, and goodness of God than the transformation and regeneration of the heart at the moment of salvation? Why are we not sharing what God has done in us to bring us from death to life?

There are many reasons for us not to talk about it. For many who claim to be Christians or to be associated with the Christian religion, it simply is because they have never met this living God at a real level and have not come to place of true repentance and self-death. I can not do justice to what actually happens at that moment in the lives of the saints, nor can it really be singularly defined (although there is clear explanation in scriptures as to the nature of what happens from that point on). Every truly saved man has a unique, yet similar testimony.

When I hear the the testimonies of the powerful men of faith throughout the centuries, my heart is always stirred. What an awesome moment! Reading just a small portion of Augustine's Confessions makes my heart rejoice. I know its been said before, but the work in salvation, the passing from death to life, the new birth of a son of God in Christ Jesus, is not something to be taken lightly... And I fear, with whatever tiny bit of minuscule spiritual discernment I have in me, that we have, as the "Christian" community have completely debased, marred, and trivialized this work. I hear it everywhere, and I see it all the time. I cringe, debate in my heart, become skeptical, and flat out get totally twisted in a knot when I look at most of the professing church and evangelical, often even totally bible-believing, community. I wonder how can it be that so many of us who claim to be "born again" who claim to have the Spirit of holiness living in us and yet live completely indistinct or unholy lives even by the standard of a completely fallen world. I do not see how this is possible when I read the New Testament. If we have known and met this supposedly Holy and Almighty God, how is it that we are not different? There is a right and powerful question put forth by the secular world when they ask what do you have that is any better than what I have when they look at the visible church of America.

A couple of key points I want to put forth and give only in question form so that anyone who dares reads this can ask their own hearts. First, do we today treat salvation with reverence, do we hold our hope of eternal security with assurance given by more than just one verse of scripture, but rather by the entire body of the New Testament? Do we read the bible only in portions and not in whole? Is our obedience and doctrine (especially referring to what is actually taught in the church to the people) compliant to all of scripture? Especially, Is our idea of what it means to be a child of God based on what the scripture tells us about how to discern the true believers? Read the whole New Testament. Do not be satisfied by a simple one word answer or a singular verse. This is not an easy question to answer and honestly, I could barely began to answer it. But, listen to this promise and follow it! "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

I want to put forth something that came to me after reading several books about men of faith from the 18th century, which involved heavy discussion on the mighty work of grace done in salvation and what that looked like. Its not a complete encompassing of the work of salvation, but one that was very evident and real in my life and I believe is a very applicable and biblical based understanding of what happens in the process of being born again. Again, God's working is far beyond any comprehension of mine, and I simply put this forth as a thought to be judged against scriptures and to reflect back upon yourself:

Their is a death of the self-will at the moment of salvation, an altogether giving up of any hope or salvation in and of ourselves. This is when the doors of grace are opened. This is when the path of faith is made known to us by the Spirit.

At Some point, we may acknowledge and know that in ourselves sin is very evident, and Christ is the Way to salvation. However, this is not the point of salvation, if we simply stop here and give acknowledgement to the cross as the way, we settle, we fall for cheap grace, we know not the the death of Christ in our own lives and in turn we fail to rise in His resurrection. We must come to the point where we realize there is NO OTHER way to salvation outside the grace and mercy of Christ; in other words, we have no way in and of ourselves to even grab hold of this salvation.

We must come to the point of TOTAL surrender to the will of God. Let thy will be done Oh Lord.

Search the Word of God for yourselves, I desperately ask you to do this and search it with an open mind and heart, willing to be reproofed and transformed in thought by it, for if you search it only to back up some preconceived notion you will likely find something to back it up and not look further to compare "spiritual things with spiritual things" as Paul commands in 1 Cor. 2:

Start in Romans 6:1-7

"What shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to in live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin..."

1 John 3:14 "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death." then... 1 John 3:24 "... And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom has given us." 1 John 5:4 "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith." Read all of 1 John, it is certainly a good book to test yourself and examine yourself as John seemingly wrote it for this very reason.

I wish I had done a more exhaustive study, I feel very incapable of doing an exhaustive work on this, but I know it is something that must be spoken about and brought up in the heart of every person who call themselves a believer. Everyone of us must come to our own assurance that we abide in Christ and come to know our salvation in the death and resurrection of Christ. I'll post several links to good sermons regarding some of the things that I have spoken about.