NEXT STEPS: I Met JesusSample

Congratulations on making the decision to accept Jesus into your life! It is truly the best and most important decision you’ll ever make! Hopefully you’ve already experienced freedom from your past and His overwhelming love for you. It’s demonstrated in the Bible that God can do more in our life in one moment than what we can do in a lifetime with our own efforts. He breaks addictions, bitterness, and anger. He heals and mends our broken hearts, and we have the privilege of knowing Him personally!

Maybe you don’t know a lot about who Jesus is, and that’s exactly why we wrote this plan. To help walk you through what it looks like to follow Him. At the end of this plan you’ll have a foundation of the Bible, His character, what God thinks of you and what it looks like to live a Christian life. After you are done reading this plan, we want to encourage you to keep seeking after God and get to know Him more each day!

So, what is Salvation? The definition of Salvation is the preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss. When we believe that Jesus is God and that He died on the cross to save us from our sins, we are saved from sin and the consequences of that.  But Jesus took on all our past, present, and future sins. In the Old Testament (which is the first 39 books of the Bible) God required animal sacrifices for the sins of the people because without the shedding of blood there could be no forgiveness. Back before Jesus walked the earth, the Israelite people would have to sacrifice animals once a year to atone for their sins on a day called the “Day of atonement.” They would also have to sacrifice an animal anytime they wanted to approach God with a request or even to worship and praise Him.

When Jesus died for us on the cross over 2000 years ago, He made it possible for us to be in God’s presence whenever we please! The reason why Jesus had to die was because He was perfect and the only sacrifice that would be able to defeat sin. He was fully man and fully God at the same time. God came up with this plan long before the earth was created to send His son to rid us of the enslavement to sin so that we could have a close, intimate relationship with Him. Sin separates us from God and the consequences of sin is death. So we needed to be made righteous to have a relationship with Him. When you raised your hand in acceptance to the free gift of salvation, you were wiped clean of your sins, and you’ve taken on the righteousness of Jesus! We were made a brand new person and we get to live out of the response to Jesus’ love and grace for us. 

Practical Step:

Spend time today thinking about what Jesus did for you on the cross. Read in John 19 the story of the crucifixion.