The Assurance of Salvation Program No SPEAKERS: JOHN BRADSHAW, RON HALVORSEN

Transcription

1 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 1 The Assurance of Salvation Program No SPEAKERS: JOHN BRADSHAW, RON HALVORSEN Thanks for joining me today on It Is Written. I m John Bradshaw. Today, a very important subject from the Bible. The Bible tells us that Jesus came into this world to save us. You would think, therefore, that anybody who encountered the Bible or knew Jesus on any level at all, would understand that, and would be able to say, I am confident that I have in my hands, in my heart, in my life the gift of everlasting life. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. (Romans 6:23) I would think that if we together took a journey into a desert where people were starving for food or dying of thirst, and we went together distributing bottles of water or food packages, that people would say, There s life. I will take the water. There s the food I need. I will grab it. If we came so that people could have life, you d expect that people would come to us and receive life. The Bible says the gift of God is eternal life. If Jesus came to this world with a gift to give out to anybody who wants it, why don t more people accept the gift or believe, and/or know they have the gift? I have a special guest with me today, Ron Halvorsen, author, speaker and international preacher of the Word of God. Someone that God has to use a biblical phrase called out of darkness and into His marvelous light. God has spoken through Ron Halvorsen many times to point many literally thousands of men and women to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. JB: Ron Halvorsen, thanks for joining me today. RH: Glad to be here. JB: I m glad you re here. Salvation. Let s talk about how people can receive the gift of salvation, and how they can know they have the gift of salvation, but before we do that, tell me what salvation is.

2 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 2 RH: Well, that s the most important point. If you have a gift that s wrapped, until you unwrap it, you don t know what it is. And the thing with salvation is you ve got to open your eyes to see who Jesus is. You need to understand who He is before you ever discover who you are. The Bible says in Matthew, when he introduces Jesus Christ before His birth, His incarnation, before the seed becomes the child. He says in the 21st verse (Matthew 1:21): And she shall bring forth a son. They shall call his name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. JB: So salvation, whatever it is, has got to have something to do with being saved from our sins, from sin. RH: Right. JB: The Bible says the wages of sin is death. Back in the Garden of Eden, two perfect people in a perfect world. Sin came and caused separation between us and God. So this act of salvation, what is that? Removing the separation so we can be one with God again. RH: It s like being set free from prison. That s salvation. Being in the storm in the water alone and a helicopter comes down and lifts you out. Going into surgery, almost dead, and coming out alive and well. Well, in the spiritual sense, that s the same thing, because the Bible talks about two types of dying. He says, Don t worry about him that kills the body but kills the soul and body. And what he means is be more concerned about your eternal destiny than your earthly destiny. A person has to come to a place where they need to feel that they have to be taken out or to escape the prison house what Paul calls the prison house of self. Salvation is the only thing that can save us from sin. Nothing else can save us from sin. JB: The person has got to know that they need to be taken out. So a person needs to realize that they are lost. RH: That s the first step. JB: Someone is doing a little self-examination and they say to themselves: How can I know I m lost? RH: First of all, a lot of people don t think they re lost. But that s why a lot of people are not receiving Jesus into their life. The first principle of salvation is, you ve got to

3 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 3 believe you have to be saved from something. It may be your ego, yourself, your depression even emotional but you have to be saved from yourself. See, by nature, the Bible says, we re all sinners. It runs through our veins. It is in our core. I mean, that s your job description, John. I hate to say it, but you re a sinner. He is a Savior. What does that mean? Well, He came to save the world. Why? Because the world needs saving. Now, the world maybe at the time didn t know it needed saving, but it needed saving. So Christ came to save the world. The world needs to recognize it needs to be saved. Once they recognize that, once I recognize that I m a sinner, I need to be saved, that s the beginning of the process of God s Holy Spirit in my life. JB: In Matthew, they come to Jesus and they say Lord, haven t we prophesied in your name? We ve done wonderful works. We cast out demons. Jesus said, I never knew you. Depart from me. They thought they were okay, but they weren t. RH: Yeah, it s not how high you jump, it s how straight you walk. That s the Gospel. The Gospel said that Jesus Christ should, when He touches you, change you. I mean, you re going in one direction and then you turn in another direction that s what conversion means. Conversion means a change of direction, and repentance is a change of direction. You see, these are theological terms, but the reality is, I m going this way, determined to go to the dead-end wall or to my death, but He turns me around and directs me toward life, so that s what He is trying to teach us in salvation that I m going in one direction and He comes and touches my life. He saves me from that direction first. He turns me in another direction. Then He saves me from myself. The biggest problem is for us to be saved from ourselves, and Jesus is the only one who can do that. JB: Somebody says, OK, I don t go to church. I don t read the Bible. I don t have faith in God. I ve got all this stuff in my life. Chances are, I m not going in the right direction. I m a lost person. I have no faith in Jesus Christ. I have not received the gift and it shows in my life. So that person comes to that realization. How do we help that person be the person God wants him to be and accept the gift God wants him to receive? How can we help that person receive everlasting life? What does that person do?

4 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 4 RH: First of all, that person is in a very good position right now. JB: Good position? RH: Very good position. JB: How is that good? RH: Well, it s good because he realizes he is lost. Once you realize you are lost, then you are in a good position. So once he gets to that place, Whew, I m lost, then I say to him, Would you like to be saved? Would you like to have a new life? Well, yeah. I remember I was sharing faith with a person at home and he said, I don t believe in Heaven. I said, If you were to die tonight, would you go to Heaven? Do you have that assurance? And he said, Well, I don t believe in Heaven. I said, What if there was a beautiful place where you didn t have to pay rent. You d eat the most incredible fruit. You d live forever. Would you like to go to a place like that? He said, Sure. You d have to be crazy. I said, That s right. Now let s get on with it. And then I showed him how eternal life was the only sane thing that you could do. So a person has to come and cry out, Lord, I m a sinner. That s the first step. Recognize you re a sinner. That s hard for most people, but to the person that does, like this man, that s the beginning of his turns. Then you have to say, How? Secondly, you have to believe. Believe what? Believe that Jesus Christ can save you. JB: So that person believes, now that person can do what? RH: Once the person believes, the Bible tells us Ephesians 2:8, 9 and Acts 16, I think they need to hear that, and they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house.

5 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 5 Belief is the next step. He has to go from believing he is a sinner to believing that God is the Savior, and he has to come to that positive step to say, He can save me because He s the Savior. The only reason He can save me is because He s the Savior. JB: I m a sinner and I m headed in the wrong direction. That s point number 1. I ve got to do something about this. Now I can believe that the medicine on offer can make me well. RH: That s right. JB: Is that fair enough to put it that way? RH: Right. And when I found out I had colon cancer, I went right away to take care of it. Well, that s the same thing here. You see, because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we re all sinners. JB: All of us. RH: So you have got to believe in Jesus Christ. What does belief do? You have to trust Him. And trust is the hardest thing. That s the hardest part of coming to this salvation. JB: How can a person have the assurance of everlasting life? How can you have the assurance? How does it work, and then how can you know it s working for you so that you can rest your head on your pillow saying, I m okay. If I open my eyes or not, I have Jesus. How can you know that? How can you have that assurance? We ll find out in just a moment. This is It Is Written. I m John Bradshaw. Thanks for joining me today. My very special guest is Ron Halvorsen, who for many years has helped people understand the love of God, what it means, and what it takes to experience the love of God and the salvation of God in their life. Today, we re talking about salvation, what it is and how you can know that it is yours how you can have assurance through Jesus Christ. JB: Ron, just a moment ago, we were talking about, firstly, that a person needs to realize that he or she is a sinner. Then recognize that Jesus is a great Savior. RH: Savior. Believe. JB: And then, now, you talked about belief, and the challenge to that is trust. Why is trust such a hard thing?

6 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 6 RH: Because we want to drive. We want to control the car. We want to control our destiny. To trust is this: If I had a chair over there and I am sitting on this chair and I say to you: John, you think that chair would hold me? You d say to me, Well, Ron, you d have to go over and try. So I go over and sit on the chair. You see, most of our life, we trust ourselves. We sit on ourselves, our good works. You know, most answers they give me when I ask them, they say, Oh, I don t kick the dog. I work hard. I pay my bills. That has nothing to do with getting you into Heaven. It s nice to do that because you should, as a believer, but that doesn t get you into Heaven. Because he says here, in Ephesians (Ephesians 2:8): For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God. Grace is called unmerited favor. I don t deserve it. One, he recognizes he s a sinner. Second, he recognizes Jesus is a Savior. He doesn t deserve it. The gift is free. You see, the value of any gift is in the love of the giver. Right? The value of the gift is in the love of the giver. Once I can show that sinner that the Savior is a loving, caring God, that He loves him with such love that He gave His life for him, that s the gift. And the gift is free. We always want to pay for it. If I say something to you, How s your spiritual life going? Or me. You say to me, Ron how s your spiritual life? I think, Well, I said my prayers, I went to prayer meeting No! How s your spiritual life? I m putting my trust in Christ. I received the gift. That moment you receive the gift of eternal life, Jesus gave you the gift. Enjoy it and that s the next step, the trust. Once I trust Him, I repent. JB: I m going to come back to repentance in a moment. There s a lot of tension in salvation there shouldn t be, but there s a little bit of tension in understanding it right. You see, God has given us the gift. Let s enjoy it, but that gift is not a license, is it? That gift doesn t mean, Well hey, I can live how I please. John Wesley, years ago, this is the struggle he had, because the prevailing belief was, in many circles, I can do what I want it s okay. I ve been saved and so I can live how I please.

7 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 7 Wesley came along and said, Well, that s not quite right. You ve received the gift of salvation, so there is going to work a change in your life. RH: I m not doing good things to please God. I m doing good things because God pleased me. JB: Right. The good things are not the root of your salvation, but the fruits. RH: That s right, the fruit. That s going to be natural fruit. It s a natural fruit. It s natural for me now to walk into a store and not want to steal. JB: Right. RH: You see, that s the difference. But to say that God saved me and now I have to do these good works so that I will be saved, that s wrong. That s not the Gospel. The Gospel is I want to do it. I need to do it. I mean, I get my greatest pleasure doing it. I get my greatest pleasure out of purity. I get my greatest pleasure out of honesty. JB: Which means, Ron, salvation cannot just be a theory. If all was theology or a theory, your heart is not involved and you are never going to want to live like a saved person out of love for God if it is just a theory. So salvation has got to involve more than our mind. It s got to involve more than our mind. It must be our heart and our life whole life, right? RH: Yeah. You see, I ve never met a person who was converted who didn t want to serve God. I ve met religious people, but never a converted person who didn t want to live for God. And that s why Aquinas said, Love God. Do as you please, for what you do will please God. And what I do everyday is to please God. The good works that come from me are the works of Christ. They are not my works. I mean, there is no good in any of us. The Scripture makes it clear. Who is righteous? No, not one. JB: That s right. RH: All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That s not a good picture of us. JB: It is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure. RH: Yeah, that s right. Get acquainted with Christ everyday. Read the Word. Love Christ. And what you do will please God, and so he comes to this place where he repents. He says, I m sorry to God. He turns in that new direction and now he confesses that he is a sinner.

8 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 8 Here s the process. It s all happening. And I don t mean this happens this day, next day. No, it happens sometimes almost instantaneously. I get amazed at what we put people through to get them saved when God in a few moments can save them. I can t explain this except to say that moment, at that Week of Prayer, I knew nothing about Matthew, Mark, Luke. I didn t know they were the synoptic Gospels. I couldn t even say Zachariah. But that moment, God did something in my life and from then on. I wanted to please God, though that doesn t mean I have always pleased Him. I m never sorry I m a Christian. I ve been a sorry Christian sometimes, but I m never sorry I m a Christian. Why? Because I ve experienced the gift of eternal life. First time I saw grace, can I tell you? JB: Yeah, please. RH: I threw a rock through a window at the public school, and I ran. I was laughing. I was having a ball. And I ran right into the arms of the Irish cop in my neighborhood, 60th Precinct. He lifted me up. My feet were still going and he said, Young man, you just threw a rock through that window. So, right away I lie. No I didn t. I saw you throw a rock through that window. You re going down to the precinct. I m gonna put you in jail. Jail? And now my mind is going. My feet are still going. He s holding me up off the ground. He is carrying me toward the 60th Precinct. There are the big doors and I m thinking, Boy, my father will come down to get me. But then I think, Oh no, my mother! We feared my mother more. And I thought, I ll be in black and white stripes I had all these things going across my mind. JB: Sure. RH: He gets to the door and he says this. He puts me down and he says, Young man, you won t do that again, will you? No, officer.

9 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 9 Then he said, All right, go and be a good boy. I ran as fast as I could to home. Hey, that was grace. That didn t mean I never threw a rock through the window again. That was where I first saw grace. I deserved to be punished, but the cop let me go. The law let me go and I was free. Wow. That was the first time I ran into grace, and I run into it when I wake up in the morning. JB: A moment ago, we started talking about repentance. I cut you off to talk about something else. RH: Right. JB: We ve come back to that. We need to talk about repentance, what that is, how it works and how we can have the assurance how we can know that we have the gift of everlasting life. More in just a moment. This is It Is Written. I m John Bradshaw. Thanks for joining me today. Today, how can you know that you have the gift of salvation? How can you go from being lost to knowing that you can look forward to eternity with God? My special guest today is Ron Halvorsen. Ron, a moment ago we talked about how a person comes to the place that they realize they re a sinner, then they realize that Jesus is a great Savior, and so they believe. Then you said the next thing is repentance. Tell me about repentance, what that is and how we lay hold of it. RH: Theologically, we would say that repentance is the heart-sorrow for sin. The heart feels bad that it hurt God. Before that, it didn t matter, but now it matters. Why is that important? Because your life is going to be lived for God, and if you hurt because you hurt God, then you re less apt to want to hurt God, and so it puts you in a power of positive living and even your life if shown in your repentance. You turn in a new direction now and you are going to live for God. JB: The Bible says God has called us out of darkness and into His marvelous life, and that s nice to be reflected in our life. I guess if we couldn t give two hoots about the darkness, then we d still be living like we re in the dark, but we re no longer children of the dark. We come to God and we re children of the light. Repentance you say heart-sorrow for sin recognizing that wrong is wrong and right is right and wanting that God lead us in that direction, sorry for our bads. RH: And that comes because of your belief in Christ. You couldn t be sorry for sin unless the Savior came down in the Spirit and convicted you of that. You re coming to this place where God is filling you, your life, and now you say, Wow! I don t want to hurt Him anymore. I mean, I love Him.

10 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 10 And you turn around in a direction now; you re walking in the direction of God. JB: You were once a child of the dark and now you re a child of the light. RH: You are walking in the light, and that s why He says that even when you stumble, you re still in the light. So fall forward if you re going to fall, John. And that s what He says. JB: Remember that verse in the Psalms (Psalm 37:24): Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand. Someone is watching, and they ve had it hard, hard, hard. Can they have that experience? They say, I m lost. And I don t care. RH: It doesn t matter how hard they are, because the light of God melts the heart. Let them open themselves up to the melting power of God, and then they won t be so hard. They can t in the spirit of hardness, but they can if they live the life of hardness, because now they ve turned around. They are going in a new direction. JB: There s hope for anybody. RH: Oh, there s hope for everybody. The Bible says that God so loved the world that he gave his Son. That s the broadness. God loves the world of mankind, of womankind, of childkind. He loves the world, my world, your world, the ghetto world. He loves the world. We can t even fathom that kind of love. JB: Briefly, because there is something else I want to ask you about in the few moments we have left Where does confession come into this? RH: I think confession comes soon after belief, somewhere in the repentance area. JB: It s important. RH: It s very important. JB: I m not that interested in making sure you re this step right, you re that step right. But confession is important. RH: Confession is important. JB: Why is it important? God knew what we did wrong. RH: Because it is important to me more than it is to God.

11 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 11 JB: Yeah. RH: Because God has already accepted it. Because it says, Hey, I m serious about this thing. I am sorry that I hurt you. You know, even in a relationship, a marriage relationship, it can t last unless you re willing to say, Hey, I m sorry. I m married 54 years. The reason I am is not because I am the best husband in the world, and not because she s the best wife in the world. But because I know to say I m sorry. I know to say I m sorry even when I didn t do it wrong. But hey, we re happy. What I m saying is my sorrow I m sorry, God, I hurt you. And that is bringing it all together. JB: So someone comes to the Lord and they say, I ve been lost. I believe that I was a sinner. Not hard to see, I m a sinner. And so I believe. I believe and, Lord, I repent. I turn away. I ve confessed my sins. I m in this attitude of repentance. So tonight, I m getting ready to go to bed and the devil says... You know you want a shot of whiskey. You know you want to watch the late movie. You know whatever, whatever and you call yourself a Christian. Who wants to go through life wondering? Does God want us to wonder, or does God want us to know we have eternal life? RH: I think John the apostle clarified it for me in 1 John 5:13. He said: These things have I written unto you that believe see, there it is on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. Know. Some Christians get mad at me when I say that on the day I gave my life to Christ, 1953, I got saved. I gave my heart to God, and listen to me, I have that assurance. That doesn t mean I m perfect. Hey, if I m perfect, I wouldn t need a perfect God. JB: You wouldn t need Christ s perfection. RH: That s right. I wouldn t need his perfection. I m not righteous. If I was, I wouldn t need his righteousness. JB: The Bible says our righteousness is like filthy rags.

12 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 12 RH: And so my assurance is the fact that He that began the good work will finish it. But God didn t call me to darkness. He called me to light. God didn t call me to live and then to die without hope. Every day is full of hope. I ve been adopted into the family of God. Every time my boy got in trouble, I didn t cast him out of the family. And yet there are some people who go through paranoia through their life. Oh, I did that. I gotta get back... No, no, no. Just get up where you are and get going again. JB: And maintain that faith and trust and believe in God. RH: That s the faith, trust and belief in God. JB: Yeah. So you re saying if someone came to the Lord, they ve accepted Him, their life is turned around, they re living their lives toward God now, in an attitude of repentance, that person should just stop worrying and keep believing. RH: Here s what happens. That doesn t mean you just surrender and you just sit there. That means, Hey, the Bible. I want to know more about Jesus. So I begin to read the Bible and I begin to read it more and more. I begin to pray like I never prayed before. I begin attend church. I begin to do spiritual things. Not because doing those things are going to get me to Heaven, but because Heaven has gotten me to these things. And once that happens, that s the horse in the right place. Before the cart. Some people put the cart before the horse and we re all sinners. Didn t the apostle say, The things I want to do I don t and the things I don t want to do I do? Sin is ever constant. What he said is sin is always in the track. It s always trying to disrupt me. I study the Word because it helps me to see Jesus more. I want to see Him better. I want to have a clearer view of Him because the clearer my view of Christ, the clearer my view of mankind. Because this is the people He died for. How can I have a passion for the lost if I don t see Christ who is the one who seeks and saves the lost? And so by looking at Jesus, the Author and the Finisher of my faith, not looking at everybody around me trying to live up to them, trying to live up to those people, their rules and their laws I know that all of you are way ahead of me in your spiritual life and your disciplined life. I m not a very disciplined person, except for reading the Word and praying. That s kind of spiritual discipline, but not these other little disciplines. That s not what is going to get us into Heaven. My trust is that Jesus Christ paid the price, and when He paid the price, He gave it to me. God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son.

13 It Is Written Script: 1239 The Assurance of Salvation Page 13 JB: Powerful truth. What did the Bible say? These things I ve written unto you that believe on the name of the son of God that you may know you have eternal life and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. My prayer for you is that you will know through having accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior no doubt, no fear, no worry. My wish, my prayer, is that you will know that you have everlasting life. Ron Halvorsen, thank you for joining me today. RH: Thank you. JB: It s been a blessing. I ve been encouraged. Let s pray together. PRAYER: Our Father and our God, thank you for the simple insights of salvation. Thank you that we can reach out in our lost condition and take hold of the hand of the One who died to save us. And thank you that those of us who walk with you can say, Lord we re keeping on. We re continuing to trust. We look to you. Lord, forgive us for our sins. There are many people today who are saying, I ve got to have this assurance, this certainty, this security. We claim it now, Father. We pray for it thankfully in Jesus name, Amen. It Is Written Box O Thousand Oaks, CA USA Tel: (805) Fax: (805)