Not By Works

EASY, YOU DO NOT Confess JESUS as YOUR LORD out of your own BODY and Mind. It is the Holy Spirit that comes into your Heart (Human Spirit), and causes us to surrender to HIM out of the Love of GOD that HE JUST POURED INTO OUT HEART. YOU CANNOT DO IT WITHOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT.

1 Corinthians 12:3 (ESV)
3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.


It is ONLY A PROFESSION, when you do it out of your own STRENGTH AND MIND, only when you let your mind be manipulated by the HOLY SPIRIT, can you SAY JESUS IS MY LORD, as a CONFESSION.

I surrendered to Jesus out of LOVE FOR HIM, confessing HIM as LORD, after 3 attemps at SUICIDE, in 4 days right after Christmas 1977. I had made up my mind that I did not want to see another day, as I REALLY WANTED TO CEASE TO EXIST. The Holy Spirit STOPPED ME, I cried for HOURS over my SINFUL LIFESTYLE (a party hardy lifestyle with street drugs and everything), after my third attempt at suicide. I mean WAVE after Wave of TREMENDOUS GUILT SWEPT OVER ME. Then I prayed a prayer that No one EVER TAUGHT ME, not even in the Lutheran Church. I PRAYED something like this that the Holy Spirit must have given me in my deepest, darkest hour:

"LORD FORGIVE ME! LORD FORGIVE ME! Lord if you have a purpose for my life, then you will have to come into my heart, and run my life. Because I am making a total mess of it."

No where did I hear a prayer remotely like that, and I am convinced it CAME FROM THE HOLY SPIRIT. I knew, what it meant. I WAS SURRENDERING TOTAL CONTROL OF MY LIFE TO HIM, FOREVER, as LORD and MASTER, OUT OF LOVE FOR HIM. There is way more to my testimony, but if you will not believe this simple truth, I will not tell you the rest.

You are Wrong, about the reality of LORDSHIP SALVATIONISM, IT IS MY TESTIMONY. And it is the ONLY true SALVATION I KNOW.

Yes I agree, that is what I meant by saying you can not even contemplate Jesus as lord BEFORE your saved, You have to have the HS, and then he trains you to get to that point.

I still disagree, and reject this form of legalism which has led to the downfall of many a brother and sister.

(Please not I am talking about the legalistic influence of lordship AFTER one is saved. Not that you said you called out to God and gave him control of your life. I do not think for a minute you even understand what that meant when you said it, I am sure it took some time for the HS to grow you in christ before you could realize the joy of having him as father.

I believe in Father/son salvation, Not lordship.

God became my father, My protector. My guide, My teacher, My discipliner, my everything, He accepts me when I am righteous, and still loves me when I falls. In fact he lifts me up. Corrects me, and tells me to keep going, he still loves me

That is my motivation. Not some set of rules and regulations and guidelines or “performance based level” that people thin I must attain, or I am not my fathers son,

Then You DO NOT LOVE THE LORD, which means YOU are NOT YET BORN AGAIN.

John 14:15 (HCSB)
15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commands.

I would say if not, (no works) Then they never had faith, and thus are not born again.

A child of God who is just born again has no capacity to love God. He does not even yet know him. So to say because they do nto love, they are not saved, would not be entirely true.

The bible does not say Love me, and I will give you eternal life. It says have faith in me and I will give you eternal life.

It is NOT LEGALISM, It is LOVE For the ALMIGHTY LORD. It is VOID of Legalism, and FULL OF LOVE FOR HIM.

John 14:15 (HCSB)
15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commands.

1 John 5:3 (HCSB)
3 For this is what love for God is: to keep His commands. Now His commands are not a burden,

HIS COMMANDS ARE ONLY NOT A BURDEN, when it is done out of an act of LOVE.

Yes, And this LOVE takes time to grow in our lives, It takes many steps of faith, it does nt happen overnight

John 14 was talking to men who had walked wiht God for three years. And experienced many things, They had already grown a lovve for him

You try to tell that to a baby Christ. Your risk losing him, They need to sit, Understand who and what God is, and take baby steps to grow and learn about God before they can fully appreciate him and truly love him

Sadly. Some believers do nto make it out of baby stage, Does this mean they were never saved?

The leglaism comes is when certain churches claim if you still do this or that, or are not growing as fast as they think you are. Your not saved, Or your not in Gods will. Or whatever form of performance midgame they play.

WANT TO BET? You are guaranteed to LOOSE. One of the things the Holy Spirit does the MOMENT HE COMES IN to birth your Human Spirit into Eternal Life, is to POUR GOD's LOVE DIRECTILY INTO YOUR HEART.

Romans 5:5 (HCSB)
5 This hope will not disappoint ⌊us⌋, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

That LOVE is a SEED in the GOOD SOIL OF OUR HEARTS. It will produce a Crop after the Likeness of GOD's LOVE In our HEARTS.

I had that KIND OF LOVE AND TRUST IN HIM for the FIRST NIGHT I WAS SAVED (Born Again) on the 29th of Dec., 1977. AND IT IS STILL THERE, burning hotter than ever. I told you, there is more to my testimony.

Yeah I will bet you

You can not LOVE someone until you KNOW THEM

At best all a new born child of God can do is APPRECIATE and have REVERENCE or GRATTITUDE for God.

I know Ronald Reagan, I loved him as a resident, He did so much for me and this country

But I can’t say I LOVE HIM, because I do not KNOW him.

Paul in eph 1 prays that the people grow to have WISDOM and REVELATION of the things God has given them, He speaks about experiencing first hand and really KNOWING (epignoso which is personal knowledge) God. And Christ

A new baby can think in his mind, I declair that I am going to obey God. Be he does not even know what that truly means yet.

I KNEW IT FROM THE FIRST NIGHT, AMEN!

YOU KNOW THEM From the First MOMENT of Genuine Faith, and THAT IS THE SAME MOMENT, that the Holy Spirit poured GOD's Love into our HEART.

You did not LOVE (agape) God the first night

I am not even sure you could have phileo love the first night, How can you even have even that kind of love for someone you just met?

In john 14, Jesu said, If you love (agape) me, keep my commands.

You need to look up the word Agape. Because I KNOW you felt Gods love, and determined to grown in him, like we all do. But you in no way had agape love for him, thats impossible

With you on this one EG.

There are a couple of things that come to mind for me.

Firstly is with people quote "If you love me you will keep my commands"

To me that places a burden upon someone.

The reason being is because if they do not or fail in any given scenario then they think they do not love Jesus because they have failed.

Then we look at the restoration of Peter.

The first two times Jesus asks Peter do you love me (Agape love)
Peter responds with I love you (Phileo love, brotherly love)
The third time Jesus asks do you Phileo me?
And Peter gets upset as says "Yes I Phileo you"

Then Jesus says "Feed my sheep"

Jesus accepted his Phileo love knowing it would grow to Agape love.

The same Holy Spirit in Peter is the same that is in us.
We move from Phileo to Agape.

It takes time and I think faith and effort to do so.
Agape is unconditional yet Phileo is conditional.

This is not true, if this was true, a baby christian would be sinless and a perfect walker of God from that point on, they would not need to learn, They would not need to test.
They would not need to go through trial and tribulation.

Why do you think the corinthian church had so many struggles with deep personal sin? Because they did not YET KNOW GOD t a point they could really LOVE HIM yet. As paul said, they were still BABES

All the things which happens between any two induviduals which causes them to agape one another (a husband truely does not know their wife when they first get married,)

Amen, This is the truth I missed out when I was growing up. I so wich I had learned it, It probably would have kept me from making so many mistakes when I left hom to go to th emilitary. I was not prepaired.

I had head knowledge, But I did not have heart knowledge, and satan sifted me and took me down..

I was luckily able to get back to church and hs some releaf. But again, Same ole stuff. Focus on word and obedience, and not on heart. Until finally when my wife left me, I left God, and for 5 years almost destroyed my life, And god let me because He had to. I needed brought to my knees, And when I was at the end of my rope. My childhood best friend called out of the blue, and helped restore me, ( I would never have responded before this moment) and I found a church who has true discipleship as its focus. Getting to KNOW God on a personal level. Not just head knowledge

And although I still suffer from the legalism which took me down, It is not near as bad as when I first came back.

Sooo true! I have witnessed this in my own personal life.

I'll bet with you.

Not everyone who comes to Jesus will automatically experience that love or know it and indeed will struggle with it.

They still fear that God loves them. Where they are at and by what they do not do to the expense of what they do not do.
That is due to the experiences of life.

1 John 4:18-19
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 19 We love Him because He first loved us.

You my fine friend have had a long walk with our Lord.
Mature in the faith and life experiences.
You have learned and God had released you from the things of life that has helped you grow in this Agape love.

No luck about it mate.

If it's in the head at some point God will give us a silver bullet (my experience) that he shoots into our hearts.

God is good and his timing is perfect.
We forget that.

Amen to discipleship that seeks to restore people on a personal relationship with God.
That's what he wants. He had that with Adam and he wants that with us.
Yet he needs to deal with the stuff that blocks it.
That's my focus when discipleship with people he gives me.

If a heart is broken and hurt when they come to Jesus it's not automatically healed.
That broken heart needs to healed in order to beat in time with the Holy Spirit.
And he is our pacemaker.

I'm a man here saying the above and walking through my past, which quite frankly I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy (not that in have any)