What does it mean to be converted?
Christ did not come into the world to call the righteous, but to save sinners. Jesus said that each individual needs to have a total life and eternity changing experience where one finds forgiveness for sin and faith in the Saviour. He said to a religious teacher called Nicodemus, ‘most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God’ John 3:3. Jesus also said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.’ (Matthew 18:3). Have you been converted?
Three things happen when you are converted to Christ:
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There is an act of will as you turn from your sin.
This is not an emotion or feeling but a deliberate willingness to turn away from all sinful practices and habits. God will give you the strength to do so if you are willing.
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There is an act of the mind and heart as you turn to Christ.
Christ carried on the cross all our public and private sins, the sins we regret and remember as well as those we relish and run to. We need to trust Christ to take away our sins and live within us as our Companion and Friend.
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There is an act of God as He turns to you.
In the moment you ask Christ to be your Lord and Saviour, you will find that God has worked a miracle within you. He brings you into a friendship with Himself. You become God’s and God becomes yours, forever. This is true Christian conversion. A famous evangelist D. L. Moody said, ‘If I can get a man to think for five minutes about his soul, he is almost certain to be converted.’ Conversion is a miracle, but it is wonderful. It can happen to you.
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In his autobiography, Colonel Harland Sanders of Kentucky Friend Chicken fame says that he was always a God-fearing man. In every venture he gave God a tenth of the profits, yet he knew that if he died, God probably wouldn’t take him to heaven. Worried, he travelled to Australia to a special church convention for the answer. He didn’t find it.
One day, Sanders was walking down the street in Louisville, Kentucky, when the minister, Waymon Rodgers, of Louisville’s Evangel Tabernacle invited him to some evangelistic services. Several days later Sanders went. At 79 he claimed the promise of Romans 10:9: ‘That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.’ He said, “When I walked out of that church that night, I knew I was a different man. All my tithing and good deeds had never given me the sense of God’s presence that I knew then.”
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