Converted But Not Changed!
Pastor Glenn Newton March 17, 2002
Acts 1:4-5; 7-9; 2:1-4
This morning’s message is an important one, I’ve been wrestling with it for a while
and I Need God’s help this morning to help me deliver it effectively.
Let me tell you why it’s important for us today.
It’s important for you in your Personal Relationship......
It’s important for us as a Church body.....
What is it?
This morning I’ve read to you the passages where God Pours out His Promised Gift, the
Holy Spirit, first in Jerusalem on his faithful disciples, and now we believe that God still
pours out the Holy Spirit in power on those who will put their trust and Faith in God. We
do believe this don’t we?
Can I tell you this morning that I’m excited because I believe that God wants to do a
miracle in our lives. God Word teaches us that God the Father wants, desires to pour out
His Spirit, the Holy Spirit upon all flesh, He would have every believer be Spirit filled!
Do you believe that this morning?
More important even than the question of Do You believe it, is the Question, ARE YOU
SPIRIT FILLED THIS MORNING?
This morning I want to talk to you about our Spiritual Lives and a Normal, healthy
progression, or maturity that we should seek to have.
This morning I am going to share with you four different stops that we can identify along
our Spiritual Journey.
1. Pre-Christian ( unsaved, unchurched, sinner) - I liked the term pre-christian
because it’s a positive way to look at your neighbor, or your children, or whoever it is that
your praying for, they are a pre-christian, they may not be there yet, but it won’t be long.
Do you remember that time before you asked Jesus into your Heart, and to forgive
you of your sins?
Can you remember how the Holy Spirit was working in your life even before you
trusted in Jesus?
Did the Holy Spirit put people into your life that helped lead you to the Lord? Or
maybe it was the prayers of your Grandma, or your parents that the Holy Spirit used to
bring conviction upon your heart and life. Who was praying for you? Aren’t you glad
they did?
Friends, do you have pre-Christians that you are praying for? The number one
thing you can do for them, is Pray for them, Pray for them in earnest, don’t quit, don’t
give up. Moms and Dads it doesn’t matter how far off your kids may seem, God the Holy
Spirit can reach them through your prayers..... Do you believe that this morning?
Friend, if you hear this morning, and you are a Pre-Christian, you haven’t accepted
Jesus as your Lord and Savior yet, let me tell you something, if you have someone praying
for you, you might as well give it up and let God forgive you, because your going to be
miserable until you do. Amen?
If your here this morning and you don’t Know Jesus as your Savior, and your not
sure if anyone is praying for you, let me tell you, you might as well give it up now because
you will have this whole church praying for you when you walk out the church today, so
you won’t really stand a chance.
At the end of our service today I will give you an opportunity to invite Jesus into
you heart, and of coarse we will all be cheering you on and praying for you.
Pre-Christian....... Friends, I challenge you to see your neighbors through this lense, see
your friends at work, your family members as folks who just need more prayer and a
invitation.
2. Born Again - (Saved, Converted) -
This is that first stop, that time in your life when you made a choice, a descision to ask
Jesus Christ, the Son of God to come into you life, to forgive your past sins, and you put
your trust and faith in Him.
Why the term born again?
The Bible teaches us that without Jesus in our lives we are spiritually dead, we are in
darkness unable to save ourselves. But when we ask Jesus into our lives, because of the
Blood that was shed on Calvary for us, we move to Life and are Born Again, this time
with a clean slate, a pure standing before God.
JN 3:1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the
Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are
a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs
you are doing if God were not with him."
“In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God
unless he is born again. " "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus
asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!"
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless
he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth
to spirit.” John 3:3-5
At this point in our Christian life we have been saved from our sins, this deals with
our past. And now we are going to learn how to live as a Christian in this world, and this
is where the church steps in and loves our new brother or sister and helps to disciple them
in the ways of the Word.
How many remember when you were first saved? Someone tell me in one or two
words, what was your emotion?
As a church I believe we understand this idea pretty well. When I’m saved God forgives
me of all my Sins(past). And now as a Christian, I begin to learn how to live and act, and
be a Christian in my everyday life.
When we say that we were saved, what were we saved from? Hell. Is that a real place?
Let me tell you the truth this morning. We who have been in the church a while,
we tend to gravitate away from this truth because we just don’t like thinking about it.
And the truth is we like to talk about God’s Love and Grace alot more than we do God’s
Judgement and Punishment.
The Word teaches us that everyone who refuses to Accept Jesus Christ as the Lord
of their life, if they ignore Him, if they act like He’s not real, if they plead ignorance, for
whatever reason a person doesn’t accept Jesus........ it won’t matter..... they will be
condemned to an eternity in a real Hell.
“ If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than
with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.” MK 9:43
You have neighbors, I have neighbors who right now, today will die and go to Hell
unless somebody warns them. You have family, I have family who even though we love
them with all our heart, if they don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, and Live
for Him, they too will be judged and will spend an eternity in Hell.
Do we care?
As a Church, Do we really Care? What would you be willing to change for the
sake of the Lost?
What’s more important, Keeping Ourselves all nice and comfortable in our nice
little church, Or doing whatever it takes to Save the Lost? How far are you willing to Go?
The One that we are to model our life after, He went all the way to a Cross, and He died
on that Cross for sinners, for pre-Christians, for you and me. He gave up his life.......Is it
to much to ask you to give up some comforts, some traditions if it will help us get more
people saved? I’m asking you........ Are you willing to Go all Out?
If you are then your in the right Church. If your answer is no, your not willing to
do whatever it takes, then you need to find another place to have your Holy Huddles,
where you can be comfortable.............Because we are going to follow our Leader, even if
it means a Cross to bear.... Amen?
We are talking about our Christian Journey, our Experience, better stated our Relationship
with the Jesus. The fact is after you are Born Again and you realize that God’s Word
teaches us to give ourself totally to God in everyarea, something very powerful begins to
take place in our lives.
How many of you have ever played tug of war at camp, or at recess? You get two teams
and each team begins to pull with all they have until one team can overpower the other
and pull the flag across the line. In Tug of War, one team always wins, you can’t keep
playing it forever. It’s impossible.
After you have been born again, there begins this tug of war in your Spiritual Life, it’s a
real battle. Who are the two teams?
When you were saved, God puts His Holy Spirit into your life, to help you, to lead
you into truth, to teach you what it means to be a Christian.
But even after your saved, their is still another part of you, it’s what we call the Carnal
Nature, it’s the part of you that screams, “It’s mine, It’s mine” when your two years old,
It’s the part of you that says, “I want more toys, more toys” when your ten years old. It’s
the part of you that thinks, “I don’t have to do this school work if I don’t want too” when
your 14 and you think you know everything. It’s that voice that says “Go ahead and do
what ever you want, nobody will every find out” when your 17 and at the wrong place
with the wrong people. When your 19 it’s that voice that says, “I’m a man or women
now, and I can do anything I want to, nobody is my boss.”
That voice will change what it says to you over the years, but it will always be
selfish, and it will be displeasing to God.
This tug of war is between this Carnal Nature that you were born with vs. The Holy Spirit
who you invited into your heart through Jesus Christ. You see, as you grow as a Christian
God will teach you that He cannot be second place in you life.
God always brings the Christian to this point, it’s really a crisis point in your
Spiritual walk, Will I surrender and give up to God and allow Him to have Total Control
of my Will, or will I hold onto my own “Rights” and try to run my own life the way I see
fit. That’s the question.
It’s at this Point that God brings us to our next Crisis Experience, and it is at this point
where we will choose to follow God wherever He leads, or we will choose to settle for
less than God’s best.
3. Total Surrender -(Entire Sanctification, Filled with the Spirit, Perfect Love)
“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be
done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- 7 because anyone who has
died has been freed from sin.” Rom. 6:6-7
When we have come to this point, we recognize that we must give God total control, and
we must turn over our self will, our future, our every area of our life, we must surrender it
to Him. When we do this, we ask God to totally Fill Us with His Spirit, to Sanctify or
Purify us through and through by His Holy Spirit. When we pray this with Faith, God
does what only He can do...... He pours out His Spirit upon us and we will know that He
has done something New in our hearts and lives.
John Wesley describes this as Perfect in Love. We beleive that the Bible teaches
us that when God Fills us with His Spirit and Sanctify’s our heart, or purifies our heart, He
also renders that old Carnal Nature dead. We die to our self, and we Live for God.
It’s at this point where I belive we have missed the boat in the church. I believe that we
have become very good at making coverts, but with out Total Surrender the Spiritual life
does not have the Power to make the radical changes that will impact our world.
Only Christians who have been filled with the Holy Spirit will be able to
accomplish all that God has planned for us. Look at the Disciples. Until God poured out
the Holy Spirit, they were very ineffective, they were cowards, they were selfish, they
were more concerned with who was the Greatest than who was lost. But then God
poured out His Holy Spirit upon thier lives, and these twelve men and those who were
with them literally turned Jerusalem upside down with their boldness, their preaching, their
sharing of Jesus to whoever would listen.
What about you this morning, Where are you on this Journey?
There is a fourth place I want to mention.
4. Growing in Grace - (Continual growth, change, a life of obedience)
Colossians 1:9-11
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience,
One of the most important aspects of the Christian life is what happens after we are saved…. The church spends a lot of time and effort on getting people saved, as it should, but we should also be spending our time and effort on building strong, growing disciples of Jesus Christ. The day of Pentecost for the disciples was really just the beginning for them, they would move out into their worlds, allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and guide them into truth and action…and we know how God used them for the Kingdom.
We need to evaluate ourselves in our Spiritual lives….we evaluate our fitness…our finances…our family…our work habits….why not our Spiritual growth?
What disciplines am I participating in that are challenging me spiritually?
In other words, how am I exercising my spiritual muscles? Am I memorizing God’s Word? Am I consciously working on my prayer life? Am I saturating in His Word, His Presence?
Am I still dealing with some of the same sin issues I was a year ago? 5 years ago? If so, why am I allowing this struggle to continue?
The truth is Jesus came to set us free…and He really means free. We need to do some analysis of our own spiritual journey and allow Christ to help us bear His fruit, and to grow in our knowledge of Him…which will strengthen us and give us great endurance and patience according to Colossians 1:11
The truth is this morning, when the Holy Spirit has control of our lives, real change happens….we become more and more like Christ…our lives reflect His Glory, His passions. Converted…yes…what about Changed?
Closing - Soften my heart, times of refreshing
