24 September 2017
Two-Minute Features | 01 October 2017 | 17 September 2017

Do We Need to Have a Specific Date? Part 2 (TMF:745)

Friday, September 29, 2017
Peace to Live By: Do We Need to Have a Specific Date? Part 2 (TMF:745) - Daniel Litton
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       The Bible says that when Abraham believed the words that God had spoken to him, that that was what made Abraham to become righteous in God’s sight, to be saved. Now, Abraham probably didn’t even know that this act of believing God for what he said made him righteous before Him. If you would have asked Abraham when he became a believer in God, he probably wouldn’t have determined that time as the time God had established. And with David, it is probably the same way. In the New Testament, there seems to be a greater emphasis on an exact moment of conversion, but again, I do not believe that knowing when this moment occurred is even necessary for the Christian. Most often, if you look at the moments where Christ is witnessed, it is done in a public setting of which a speaker commands people to repent of their sin and accept Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for them. And because of this, there tends to be a notable moment where people accept the Gospel. Of course, there is an actual ‘moment’ in time when the salvation of each and every individual occurs, but sometimes people don’t know when that moment occurred.

Do We Need to Have a Specific Date? Part 1 (TMF:744)

Thursday, September 28, 2017
Peace to Live By: Do We Need to Have a Specific Date? Part 1 (TMF:744) - Daniel Litton
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       Now, for some people, they don’t have a specific date that they can single out as to when they became a Christian. For them, it was more of a gradual process. There was a seed planted here, and then there, until as time passed by, they identified with Christ, that they wanted to and were following the Christian ways, the correct ways of all time. Sometimes this is just how God works in person’s life. We cannot, and should not, place God in a box and say that every Christian there is needs to have a specific date at which time the person accepted Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. That’s just not the way it is for everyone. The Bible doesn’t say a person has to have a specific date. If we go to the Old Testament, I think we can see a lot of examples where people became ‘saved,’ or righteous before God in his sight (as it was called back then), and these people did not perhaps even know they became saved. Let’s look at Abraham as a specific example. The Bible says that when Abraham believed the words that God had spoken to him, that that was what made Abraham to become righteous in God’s sight, to be saved.

When We See Reality for How It Really Is (TMF:743)

Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Peace to Live By: When We See Reality for How It Really Is (TMF:743) - Daniel Litton
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       The first type of repentance that we all experience occurs when we first became saved. Now, for those of us who can clearly identify a ‘date’ of which we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we can easily remember when we first realized that we were living lives separated from God, following the ways of this world, and we decided that we didn’t want to live like that anymore. Our eyes were opened, and we saw the Truth of the Bible, God’s truth, and that we needed to make change in our lives. I often say of my own testimony, “I saw reality for how it really is,” and I think that captures the difference between our old lives, steeped in this world’s system, and the new lives we find in Christ. So, we identify our sin, and then we turn from it, and seek to live our new life in Christ.

The Two Kinds of Repentance for the Christian (TMF:742)

Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Peace to Live By: The Two Kinds of Repentance for the Christian (TMF:742) - Daniel Litton
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       Certainly, when a person becomes a Christian, accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior, this turning from sin is a necessary thing that needs to be done in order to gain acceptance from God. That’s how Jesus becomes Lord in the person’s life. Therefore, there are then two kinds of repentance. There is the initial repentance that occurs when we first become a Christian, and then there is the ongoing, recurring repentance that occurs from time to time in the Christian’s life. Some of this is daily, and some of it comes as we identify new areas where we can eliminate sin from our lives. None of us are perfect right now, and we truly never will be perfect in this life. That is why the Christian life is one of constant growth, because as we go along we notice better ways to live, thus adopting a better way of living and eliminating sin in the process.

Intro to Understanding Biblical Repentance (TMF:741)

Monday, September 25, 2017
Peace to Live By: Intro to Understanding Biblical Repentance (TMF:741) - Daniel Litton
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       If we are going to follow God correctly in our lives, as Christians, then repentance from sin is going to be a big part of our lives. As we grow into becoming more and more like Christ, we are going to find new areas where sin is identified in our lives. At that point, we need to turn from it and go from there in living life without practicing that sin any longer. And then, of course, there are the daily struggles that we face with temptations to sin, and when we need to, we are going to have to repent and turn from our sin. So, repentance is an important part of the Christian life. Now, there was a time when we turned to God, accepting Jesus as Lord, and at that time we repented of our sin. We turned from living of our lives without God’s input. So, when each of us became a Christian, we had to turn from our sins—the things we were practicing in our lives, living out, which we identified as wrong behaviors, behaviors against God.