The steps to becoming a Christian can be broken down into these three simple actions. First, you have to believe that God sent His Son to die for you and that He was resurrected, thus making eternity with God the reward.

But if all you do is believe it, that won’t help much. The Bible says that even the demons believe, but they are destined for eternity away from God, not with Him. The next step is very important because it puts you in the driver’s seat of making the right choice. If someone gives you a gift, they have it in their hand and are holding it out to you, and you just walk away, did you receive it? Of course not! That is what God is doing; He gave His Son Jesus and you have to receive the gift of His love, mercy and grace in order to partake of the salvation that He wants to give you. The choice is to turn away from sin, repent and receive the free gift of God. Many people, including some of my family members, think that they are good and don’t do bad things, so that means that when they die, they will go to Heaven. I have multiple friends who believe that if they go to church and confess their sins weekly, they are good to go for eternity. Unfortunately, these people are trying to make up their own rules for getting into God’s presence and He has already firmly established what it takes. He doesn’t expect one thing of one person and another thing of another. Everyone has the same expectations.

Each individual has to believe and receive on order to have the promise of eternal life.

The third part of salvation is to start doing the things you read in God’s Word that you should be doing. And, it goes without saying, you cannot do what is in God’s Word if you aren’t reading it to find out what is there. If you are making a brand new-to-you recipe and never look at the instructions, the chances that the dish you are making will turn out the way it is supposed to are slim to none. God’s Word is our instruction book for our lives, so if we never read it, how will we know how we are supposed to live. How do we do what it says when we don’t know what it says?

When I was a pre-teen, I remember that one day my mom came to my bedroom door and was talking about something. I had no idea what she said because I didn’t really listen since I was reading or doing homework at the time. I do know that she ended with, “Well, get started and do what I told you to do!” I had no idea what she had told me to do, so I had to ask her, a question that made her very angry since I had missed an entire speech about what she wanted me to accomplish. That’s what it’s like, I think, when God is telling us to do something and we just tune Him out because we are preoccupied with other things. We need to tune into God and His Word and tune out the world and all of its distractions. That way, we can truly LISTEN to what He wants us to do, including how to act and react.

One of the most important instructions in the Bible is to GO. This is a command, not a suggestion. No matter where we are going, we should have in mind that our directive is to make disciples. We cannot follow through if we are not open to the leading of the Holy Spirit who will tell us plainly what to say and to whom, if we are listening. I have discovered that most people don’t have the time or desire to listen to me tell them all about the Roman road to salvation, but they usually listen intently to personal testimony backed up with scripture. Maybe I am doing things all wrong, but I consider what I do to be planting seeds. God will send someone else to plant more seeds and to water and He will harvest. Sometimes, I get the privilege of seeing the person again and planting more seeds or even doing the watering. Whether that is true or not, I hope and pray that what I do is beneficial to building God’s kingdom and fulfilling His command to “go and make disciples.”

Finally, there are a lot of commands in the Bible. We can read them and obey them or we can choose to ignore them and be disobedient. Obey is one of the actions that we are to take once we believe and receive. Seek God and His truth and then act on what He tells you to do. The same God who made you wants to spend eternity with you. It’s your choice. Do you want to believe, receive and act? Dust off your Bible or pick up your phone and install a Bible app. I recommend the YouVersion, but there are many different apps you can use. Just start, take one step at a time in this walk of faith that starts with believing. God bless all who have read this blog post today and may the Lord lead you and guide you to follow His instruction book to eternal life.