Man Church - Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart

Thank you Colleen, Carol, Heinz Lycklama, and many others for tuning into my live video! Follow me Dr. John A. King (Th.D.) or on Social [e-mail] Asking Jesus Into Your HeartBusiness for TodayI encourage you all to register at manchurch.online for monthly reminders.Follow on social media and Substack @drjohnaking.Phoenix Collective Free Master Class on Redefining Normal:https://rise.phoenixcollective.app/event-pageMy StoryI remember when I first responded to an altar call to give my life to Christ. I was probably 11 and had just spent the afternoon smoking cigarettes I’d stolen from a local store before Bible study at the Friday Club at our local church, Calvinistic Methodist.It was a real encounter.I mean, the world stood still.My soul came alive.They gave me a little Gideons Bible.For me back then, life was rough. Abusive at home, physically and sexually. I was made to do a lot of things I never wanted to do. I assumed I was the bad person because I was doing these things. I assumed I needed to get saved again, because obviously I wasn’t saved, or bad things wouldn’t happen to me.So I went to a Presbyterian church. They had a youth program, and I prayed again. I was 13. I went back home and life was still shitty.A couple of years later I went to an Anglican church. They took communion every week. I went back the following week and the minister told me I couldn’t take communion again because I wasn’t confirmed. I went home and read the whole New Testament and came back, excited to tell him that I’d discovered I didn’t need to be an Anglican to take communion. I just needed to have asked Jesus and be trying to be a real Christian, and I’d done the “into my heart” thing a couple of years before.He said I was wrong. I told him to go f**k himself. I got kicked out of church. I was 16.When I turned 18, and I could drive, my moron mate Ray Fuggle and I would hop in his orange Kombi van and every Sunday we’d look up churches in the Australian equivalent of a Mapsco and randomly pick one. We’d take neckties with us and a packet of biscuits (cookies, in your vernacular) and go looking for pretty girls, a free feed, and Jesus.I got saved again in a Spanish-speaking church, sitting at the back, not knowing what was going on, but I knew I needed something. My heart ached for my life to be different, so I walked the aisle.I spent the next six years fighting and shagging my way through college. Every night I would read my little Gideons Bible and slur-pray, asking for forgiveness, before I went to sleep. I ended up on another altar call at a new starter church called Hillsong and wondered if this time it would take.In my early 20s I ended up in ministry at Hillsong Church, and my compulsory altar-call-attending didn’t stop. I went to the altar most Sundays because I didn’t feel good enough. I didn’t think God loved me. I didn’t think I was good enough to make the grade. I look back at my last week and thought, If I died tonight, I’m screwed.At some point, probably late 30s, early 40s, I realized this wasn’t about me needing to be saved. It was about me understanding what salvation meant.And I am sure many of you here today have faced, or are facing, the same dilemma. So I want to give you some basic theology, explain one scripture, ask you three questions, then have a chat.Theology Without the Eye-RollNow, when it comes to theology, I will not treat you like morons if you don’t pretend to be idiots. We are all grown-ups, and we can understand big words and new terms if someone takes the time to explain them.There is nothing hard about theology. What is hard is accepting the truth of its simplicity.Humans always want to screw things up, particularly when it comes to the nature and character of God, by making it more complicated than it is so they look smarter than you. They are not.So when I say theology, don’t roll your eyes. That’s why we keep the cameras on.Theology is simple, beautiful, and obtainable. It is the study of who God is, what He has said about us, and what He has done for us.Let me read you a statement, then I’ll break it down:Salvation is God’s free, sovereign grace rescuing sinners by uniting them to Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit’s work, so that they are justified (forgiven and counted righteous), then sanctified (changed), preserved (kept), and finally glorified (made whole), all received by faith alone, not earned.Break It Into Two PartsPart OneSalvation is God’s free, sovereign grace rescuing sinners by uniting them to Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit’s work, so that they are justified (forgiven and counted righteous).Salvation is God’s free and gracious gift of rescuing sinners (you and me) from the consequences of life choices and actions that He does not approve of.Jesus rescued and saved us by what He did on the cross when He died for us.How do we earn salvation? We don’t. It is a gift of grace. That means it...