Are You Saved ? Are You Sure?

Are you saved? Are you sure? I'm Rick Bloodworth, this is the Common Sense Christian Channel, and today we want to talk about our salvation. Now if you have tuned in today to find out exactly what you need to do to be saved, to have somebody else tell you what you need to do, then you may be disappointed. But if you have a desire to be able to put in the work for yourself and find out for yourself what the scriptures say saves you, to where you can know for certain, Well, then stick around for a little bit because I think maybe this program will help you to be able to achieve that goal. But let me start off by saying why I'm not going to tell you in this particular program what you need to do in order to be saved. You can, you can turn into probably a hundred different videos today. You can look at a hundred different YouTubes or a hundred different religious programs, and you're going to get different ideas, different opinions of people as to what you need to do to be saved. And the moment that I go outside of the bounds of what you already remember, or what you already believe, you're probably going to turn it off. Because that's the way people are. They don't, they don't want their belief system challenged, even on something as important as salvation, and that, that's a shame. Imagine if you're, if you're driving down a road and, and, and you know for a fact that one of one of the turnoffs on that road is going to lead to a bridge that's out, and the other road's going to take you to safety. But you're not quite sure which one it is. But now somebody you trust has told you this is the one you need to be taking. And, and so that's the one you're going to be taking. So when you get to that fork in the road and there's somebody standing there and he says, no, they told you wrong. Well, you may or you may not believe them. That's the way it is with religion. So often, somebody we trusted told us what we need to do to be saved. Maybe it was a preacher, maybe it was a pastor, maybe it was our mom or dad. Maybe it was a friend that just seems really smart when it comes to religious matters. Or maybe we've just had deep thoughts on it. And we've already decided what we believe God requires for us to be saved. And so if somebody tells you different, then you're not going to listen much. And just think of all the different things out there that we hear. As far as salvation goes, we'll have some that tell us you need to be christened when you're a baby. You need to have some sort of religious rite performed on you by others in order to be saved. You'll have other people say, no, no, you just need to invite Jesus into your heart through prayer, and then you'll be saved. You'll have other people say, no, you need to believe in order to be saved. You'll hear other people say, no, it's the grace of God that you require. Others will say that it's the sacrifice that Jesus made. Others will say repentance is part of salvation. Others will say baptism is part of salvation, just on and on and on. And the moment you hear something you don't want to hear. Human nature usually has us tune it out, even if we don't turn it off. So let's get back to our original Question. Are you saved? Are you sure? How can you be sure? In 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 15 it says, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, correctly handling the word of truth. Well, there we're commanded to correctly handle the word of truth. What's the word of truth? Well, clearly we're talking about the Bible here. and we're commanded to correctly handle it. It's not saying that we have to know every minute detail of, of things that, that people consider to be trivial matters. I don't think there's a lot of trivial matters within scripture, don't get me wrong, but I think sometimes we go off on trivial pursuits, don't we? But when it comes to understanding what we need to do to be saved, The Bible is pretty clear on that, and we can find out. I'm going to give you a method to do that in just a moment. But again, we're commanded to do our best to present ourself to God as one who correctly handles His Word. Are you doing them? The other passage that I wanted to look at today is found in Philippians chapter 2. In verse 12 it says, Therefore, my dear friends, as you've always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Some of your versions say continue to work out your own salvation. with fear and trembling. But the idea here, the command here, is that you and I have our responsibility to make sure that we are working out our salvation. When he says work out your own salvation, he's not saying work out your own plan of salvation. He's not saying come up with your own ideas and then just go that direction. Otherwise, we'd pick something pretty easy, wouldn't we? I'd pick something like just eat chocolate pudding every day and, and then you'll be saved. And since I got to work out my own plan of salvation, well, that would be just as good as anybody else's plan. Let's know what this says. It says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. The idea is God has told us what we need to do, but we have a personal responsibility to find out what that is. So again, let's go back to this, to this idea. How can we find out what it takes to be saved? And so here is a suggestion for you. We started a number of years ago with, with a very simple program. It was a Bible reading program, and it was, it was designed for this very purpose so that individuals would could on their own study the word of God and find out for themselves the important truths contained within the Bible. Whether we're talking about salvation or whether we're talking about worship, whether we're talking about certain moral issues, whether we're talking about about principles that God wants us to inculcate within our lives that will make our lives better and the lives of others around us better. And so, you know, The idea behind this is to go to the Bible yourself, read it yourself, and study it yourself to find out what God's Word has to say. Now, a lot of people at this point will be saying, No, Bible's too difficult. Ten different people can look at the same passage of Scripture and then come up with ten different ideas as to what it means. Not gonna do it. I'm gonna leave that to the professionals. But let me caution you, if you do that, you're leaving your eternity in the hands of somebody who may or may not be qualified as far as telling you what you need to do to be saved, or to be pleasing to God, or, or any other matter that you may be looking for. You have to do it yourself, because we're commanded. Correctly handle the word of truth doesn't mean to turn it over to somebody else so that they can correctly handle it for you. You cannot delegate the responsibility of your salvation to somebody else. And if you could, wouldn't you be taking a big risk? Who would you delegate that responsibility to? So again, a few years ago we, we came across something, an idea. As far as reading and studying the Bible, you may already have a good method of reading the Bible right now. You may have a good idea and a good method of studying the Bible right now. If so, let me encourage you to keep with that. You found something that works that you're used to, it's going to be successful for you. But if you don't have that already, here's, here's something I'm going to suggest. We started something called the 30 day Bible challenge about, I don't know, six, seven years ago. And, and it's just a thought or a method to, to read through the New Testament in 30 days. We called it a challenge because everybody seems to like a challenge, but by reading through the New Testament in 30 days, You get an overview, perhaps like you've never had before. A lot of times when we read the Bible, we just kind of dabble. We read it like we do a magazine. We flip to this page or we flip to that page. Or maybe we, we get some kind of a concordance and, and we look at topics that interest us. Nothing wrong with, with those things. But as far as being able to find out the whole truth. you're just going to have to sit down and read it someday. And so this is a method to do that. It's, it's, it's, it's something that's very simple. The first week you read seven chapters a day, the next week, eight, the next week, nine, the next week, 10, and the last two days you read 11. the first half of Revelation and the second half of Revelation. But by doing so, you will have read through the entire New Testament in 30 days. Why start with the New Testament? And the answer is, the New Testament reveals to us the good news about Jesus Christ. And it is through Jesus Christ whom we will be saved. And so, start there. If you start in the Old Testament, you're going to get bogged down. I, I, I don't know how many times I started reading through the Scriptures. Usually it was a New Year's resolution or something like that, and I was going to read through the Bible that year, and I'd start in Genesis and did pretty good, because Genesis quite frankly is, really interesting. There's lots of good stories, true stories that, that we're all interested in from from the creation to the flood to, to the tower of Babel. All just, just all sorts of really good information. So that's interesting. Exodus is pretty good at the first part. You read about the Israelites being enslaved within Egypt and Moses coming and helping them. By God's power to be freed from that slavery and the first several chapters are really interesting But then once you start getting a little bit more into it You start reading the various laws and quite frankly once you get past the ten commandments those laws can be kind of Burdensome and they can be kind of dry And again, they're not for us anyway. I do believe they give us a great insight as to what God considered to be important. And I do think we need to be reading the Old Testament. It's the Old Testament that will give us an understanding of who God is and how he interacts with people. But the New Testament that contains the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ, that's the place to start. So take 30 days. If you don't already have a plan for reading use this 30 day Bible challenge. If you'd like some of these, you can, you can request as many as you want. We'll send them to you free. The next thing that, that we encourage people is now to study through the New Testament. And so we came up with a program called the 90 Day Commitment. And this one is just starting to slow down a little bit on our reading. But to do so with a real intent. And by a real intent I mean now we're going to go back through the same scriptures we've already read and we're going to take about three chapters a day every day and we're going to be gleaning from those chapters the questions that we want answered. I always encourage people to start for sure with the topic of salvation. And as you start going through the Bible, starting with Matthew 1, verse 1, and ending in Revelation, chapter 22, you're going to write down everything that the Bible says saves you. And you'll just have a section in a notebook that does that. And I would encourage you not just to write down the scripture, but to write the entire scripture out. That way, when you're through, you can take that notebook and you can read it. verse by verse, everything that the New Testament says that saves you. Maybe the topic you're interested in is the worship on the first day of the week, and so you start looking for examples and instances and commandments concerning the worship within the New Testament. So you have a section for that. Maybe you want to study grace, so you've maybe never really dug into this topic before, and so now you're going to write down every passage of scripture that, that talks about grace. Did you know that Jesus never is recorded as uttering the word grace in the New Testament? This is revealed after his resurrection. Now, grace is, is talked about a little bit within the Gospels. But it's just an introduction and it's not Jesus who talks about it. It's the writers, the inspired writers of these books. But as you go through the New Testament, especially as you start getting into Acts and Romans and all the letters and different books in the New Testament, you're going to read things about grace that will amaze you. that will, that will please you immensely. It will, it will give you an insight as to, as to God's true love for you. And so maybe grace is something you want to study. Maybe it's going to be works that you want to study. There's a lot of people that are very opposed to works. Always have been people that have been opposed to hard work in life, and maybe you want to see what kind of works that God expects you to do. and, and what these works will do for you. And so, so, so make a category on that, but whatever the subject is that you want to, to study, just, just have a special section within your notebook. And then for 90 days, three full months at about three chapters a day, there's 260 chapters in the New Testament. So 10 of those 90 days, you're just going to read two chapters, but the rest, three chapters a day. And just read through them and write down whatever the verse is concerning whatever subject you, you have determined. And when it comes to salvation, the, the reason that maybe you tuned into this video today, if you start writing down everything that the New Testament says saves us, When you get through, I guarantee you, you're going to have your eyes opened because there's going to be some things that you just knew saved you that the New Testament does not talk about in the real, in relationship to salvation. And there may be other things that you were absolutely convinced did not save you. And yet when you put your finger on it in the Bible, you find out it says, this is what saves you. So, so do that. Think about that 30 days to read through the New Testament and get an overview. 90 more days to study through the New Testament. In 120 days, you are going to have the best insight as to what saves you as you've ever had within your life. And I would encourage you not to quit studying at that point, but I would say that by the time you do that, you're going to have a knowledge that, that you didn't have before, because now this is going to be your knowledge. You went through the scriptures for yourself. You wrote down every one that you discovered talked about the topic that you were wanting to talk about, in this case, salvation. And so you wrote it out. And now, you know. By the time you get through this 120 days, by the way, that's four months. That's a lot of time, isn't it? It's gonna take you anywhere from 15 minutes a day to half an hour a day. It is a challenge and it is a commitment, but I would suggest to you that your salvation is worth it. And so once you have done this, you've taken these four months and you've really applied yourself to studying the New Testament, then you'll know. And you might be saying, well, four months is just too long, but let's face it, four months from now, you're going to be four months older anyway. Why not spend these four months, just a small portion of each day doing something significant. that could affect the rest of your life. And by the way, this 30 day commitment, this does not tell you what to believe by any stretch. It just gives you the strategy on how to study the New Testament. And again, if you'd like a copy of this, just put down in the comments that you would, you would like this or email me. My email address is real easy to remember. It's rickbloodworth at juno. com And that way nobody else has to see that you're ordering any of these materials, but again, they're free They don't cost you anything and and you can now you've got something that will give you a very simple method to read through the word and to study it and once you've done that once you have Done your your reading of the new testament and your studying of the new testament and you want to further your your reading and your study. Then there's the Old Testament challenges. And the Old Testament's four times as long as the New Testament, just about. So it'll take you four times as long to read through the New Testament. So reading through the, excuse me, the Old Testament. So reading through the Old Testament at about the same pace you did the New is going to take you four full months. But at the end of those four months, you will have done something most people have never done in their lives. You will have read through the Old Testament. And then if you want to go back and do studies on the Old Testament, you can do the exact same thing in the exact same way. But if you'd like to order the material for the Old Testament, again, just put it down in the comments and, or, or, or email me at rickbloodworth at juno. com and tell me what materials you'd like. Again, there's never been a charge for this. We've had a lot of donations through the years, unsolicited I might add, but people who have thought I would like to help with these materials and so we've just taken whatever funds they've given and we have used them to print up these materials so they're already paid for, is my point. And the postage is already paid for. You're not putting this out at all. And we don't want any contributions from you for this. But if you'd like these materials, do that. And again, why are we doing that? Because we want to know. There are way too many people who have just been diddy bopping along in this world when it comes to their eternal salvation. And a lot of people are confused because not only are they not certain that they're saved, but in so many other important areas that they just don't know the answers. to the questions that they have. And yet there is a source of answers for every important question you could possibly ask as far as, as far as how God wants you to live and to serve him. And he's worth the time and the commitment. And Jesus is worth the time and the commitment. Never forget that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. He allowed Jesus to be the sacrifice for you. Never forget that Jesus made that sacrifice. He came down from heaven. He walked this earth in the form of a man and then he made the sacrifice for our sins. They are worth it. So if you wonder whether or not you can actually do this, whether you can put in the time and the commitment to find out what it is that God wants you to know, you're going to have to sell yourself on the fact that Christ is worth it and that God is worth it. But once you do that, and once you become a regular reader and student of the Word of God, it's going to change your life for the better. I know this is true. When I was 22, I was one of those people that were just kind of diddy bopping along, went to a gospel meeting in Casper, Wyoming, the preacher, Jack Carter got up and, and he said, did you read your Bible today? I hope you have. And they talked about the importance of reading the Bible. And I got to thinking, I grew up with Christian parents and a Christian household going to church every week, sometimes three times every week. I even went to a Christian college. And yet I had never read through the Bible. I was relying on other people for important things, including the most important thing, the salvation of my eternal soul. And so when I was 22, I was ready to stop fooling around and start finding out for myself. And so I started reading the Bible. I can still remember I was, I was in the office that day. I didn't have any work in, everybody else was gone. I just opened up the Bible. It came open to Zephaniah and I started reading in Zephaniah and I read all the way through the rest of the Old Testament, all the way through the New Testament, and then started back over in Genesis and just kept on reading. Haven't stopped since in over 40 years. I haven't stopped. I'm not saying that to brag. I haven't stopped eating meals every day either. That's not bragging, that's just what we need, isn't it? You need food for your physical body, and you need the Word of God for your spiritual soul. You don't have to rely on others. You don't have to live a life of uncertainty. And you don't have to be miserable because you've been making all sorts of mistakes, but you're not sure how to correct them. Because the Word of God will help you with that, and it will show you that not only can you be forgiven, but how you can be forgiven. It will not only tell you what you need to do, but it will tell you how you should live. It's going to give you a better life. I know this to be true. Been doing it for over 40 years now, and it's the best decision I ever made. Are you saved? Are you sure? If the answer to these questions is, I don't know, or no, here's something you can do. Why not start today? I appreciate your listening today very much. If this helps you and you think it might help somebody else, do me a favor and share it with, with other people. Hit that like button. That'll, that'll get it out before more people on this YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel. If, if these types of videos help you. If they don't, don't do any of those things. But if this is something that you find helpful, then let me encourage you to do those things. It will help out the channel to, to get out to more people. And hopefully it will help more people to be in a position to where they can live better lives as well. I appreciate your tuning in. I pray that God will richly bless you as you seek to serve him to the very best of your ability. Take care.