In planning my upcoming lessons, I felt the Lord was telling me to go back to the basics of the Christian faith.

First of all, this means to clarify the meaning of salvation in Jesus. If we aren’t clear, if we don’t have a saving, eternal, personal relationship with Jesus, nothing else ultimately matters.  I was reminded that Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” On a personal level the answer is pretty obvious. Regarding the Bible805 ministry, the Lord reminded me that even if I help you understand the content of every book in the Bible from the lessons, if you can have the prophet and Kings timelines understood and in order and my books help you read that Bible—if I haven’t clarified the meaning of salvation in Jesus and helped you find it, I’ve failed at the most important part of my calling.

The challenge isn’t limited to me personally. How well does your church clarify this to your community?

I asked A.I. for a random reivew of the websites of 20 churches in my area and to flag them if they had a place on their website that answered the question, “What do I need to do to be saved?” “How do I become a Christian?” –the wording did not need to be exact. If this information could not be found on the site, I asked for a label “information not available.”

I got a reply of “information not available” for 17 out of 20. A.I. was very generous in that the three that did mention how to become a Christian, it had to be inferred from either a statement of faith or a “What we believe” section. A simple explanation of  This is what you need to do to become a Christian was not available on any of them.

In addition to simply not talking about salvation, it seems that there are many dangerous messages floating about that reduce the process of accepting the gift of salvation, however tangentially it might be mentioned to grabbing the goodie of a carefree life with no repentance, commitment, or counting the cost. And such a response leads to believers who experience disappointment and sometimes anger when God doesn’t do what they thought He was supposed to do.

To clarify all that surrounds the topic of salvation, I did the lesson that follows, and created a number of additional resources, including infographic handouts, to help explain it. I also wrote a short book, The Good News of Salvation in Jesus, why you need it and how to make it yours. This lesson is a condensation of the content of that book. You can download a free PDF of it from the www.Bible805Academy.com site or order it in paperback format from Amazon.

Following is a link to the podcast and video of the lesson, downloadable notes, discussion guide, and an infographics file, plus a link to the resources to teach it that are available on the Bible805Academy.com. Please first of all, check this out for yourself and then pass it on to others who need to know Jesus. At the end of this post is a ZIP file that contains 3 infographics in PDF and jpg formats that explain the process of salvation.

Link to all source materials to teach the lesson on www.Bible805Academy.com —CLICK HERE for this lesson. [Read more…]