Faith in Salvation and Baptism to Conquer (Romans 6:13-14)
We understand the Word of God through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Maybe it would be better if it were easily explained, but the Bible can only be understood through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Because the Bible was written by people inspired by the Holy Spirit, so even when we read the Bible, we must read it with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
What is salvation? Why are there disasters in the world? “Pastor, there aren’t disasters,” such people are irrelevant to God, and they will realize later on when they face disasters, but it’s already here. They have a disaster that they cannot understand God. There are no other disasters.
The disaster arises from our unbelief, our disobedience towards God, our sin. It turns out Satan is doing the work of making us sin. The one who commits the sin is the person, but Satan initiated that sin. 1 John 3:8 says the one who sins is of the devil. This disobedience doesn’t come from out of nowhere; without a doubt, the devil was the progenitor of disobedience.
Even right now, at this time, the work the devil is doing is planting disbelief in your brain so you won’t believe in God, but you’ll believe more in your thoughts. That’s your spiritual state. It means that Satan works upon you to deceive you.
The result is being completely separated from God and God’s blessings, those are curses and disasters. Humans were created to live with God’s God-given blessings, however, because of our disobedience and the works of Satan, we have been separated from those blessings. How do these invisible things enter into our thoughts and hearts?
Why do you feel good or bad? Something good or bad happens to you, so your state is in sin, Satan, and separation. We’re depressed because we form our own standard, and we may be depressed even if nothing depressing happens. Either way, God wants to save me from a state in which I’m centered on myself.
What is the “me” problem? It’s the software that is the standard, that’s me. Our thoughts, our hearts, our desires and emotions, that’s “me,” and above that, my spirit, that’s “me.” The spiritual things are just a cover. Saving myself from “me” means I’m saved from the software of my inner self, in other words, I’ve been liberated from sin, Satan, and separation, how? There’s no other way.
Somebody other than myself has to die on the cross for my sins. It must be God Who has no sin to come on earth. Without a doubt, this person has to liberate me from Satan’s authority, and no one in the whole world could overcome the devil. There wasn’t a single god in Egypt who could overcome the devil; they served the devil. No religion on earth can overcome the devil. Only Christ.
Why is it only Christ? Only Christ can solve the problems of sin, Satan, and separation. You have to understand what this means to understand salvation, but without this, you think going back and forth from church is salvation, and you may find it kind of believable because you received haphazard grace, but it means you’re living a cursory walk of faith as you do not know your own problem.
If you know this, you know people very well. Why do people get conned in their business? When people date others, why do they get with very strange partners? It’s because they don’t see this state, they just look at the outer appearance and people look good like me. Hallelujah? “Oh, they’re so handsome, hallelujah,” but you must see their inner state. What’s their inner spiritual state like? Because this person will act based on their inner, spiritual state.
But if you don’t look at that and you think they’re that great, they’re actually not that great. You have to know this to help others. If you don’t know this, then you cannot see their inner state, then how could you help them? It’s ultimately about people, not about animals. Isn’t that right? People are the ones creating problems in this world, not animals. It’s because you don’t know people. Why do these people create problems? They themselves don’t know because they’re seized by these three problems. But who are the ones who know salvation? They know themselves.
These are problems invisible, so people think of salvation very haphazardly as they do not know this. You must be very certain about salvation, and the fact that you’re certain in salvation means you’re certain in the fate of mankind. You must know the answer very definitely. For the people who know the answer to the problem of mankind, they can save people, they can diagnose their own personal problems.
“Where am I broken?” They can diagnose themselves, but people who do not know this will think, “Why am I like this?” They don’t know, so this is very important. That’s why it’s impossible for us other than Only Christ. The people who have been liberated have been baptized. We think of baptism in terms of water, but that’s just the form, not the real thing. It’s an expression of internal faith, but what does this mean?
Submerging in water means I’m dead, and resurfacing means I’m living again. The reason God brought the Israelites to the Red Sea was for baptism. They should have drowned in the Red Sea but God saved them. You cannot come to life by trusting yourself. If you were alive, you cannot cross the Red Sea. The Red Sea is the present problem and the problems of the future. The Egyptian army behind me is the scars and problems of my past, but people who don’t know this will say, “I tried to receive salvation and it’s not much.” If people look at the person who has been saved by God’s grace, they’ll say, “It doesn’t matter much,” but they are trembling before the Red Sea.
Both unbelievers and believers trembled, and they appear the same, but what’s the difference? People who are baptized have experienced death. We’re saved by grace, meaning there’s nothing we can do about it. If God gives us the grace, we naturally turn towards faith. However, if I actually want to overcome the problems of my present reality and my past, I must experience the true baptism. Right now, the reason you are suffering under the problems you face or you’re seized by the scars and experiences of your past is because God wants to give you these experiences as part of the accurate gospel.
Who would be unafraid before the Red Sea? Only those who believe God will fight for us will be unafraid, but those who are afraid think they have to cross by themselves. It means I’ve died on the cross but I don’t yet acknowledge my thought, so I’m in a state where I’m still alive and that’s why I’m still afraid. All the experiences and scars of my past still give me fear now. You have to experience this faith.
God is my Master, God is moving, I died on the cross with Christ and now Christ lives within me. Now, nothing matters to me. Now, as I go through the wilderness, I may not have food and it may be too hot or cold, it doesn’t matter. Even among the Israelites, there were people who followed after Moses’ faith, but the people who are going through the wilderness without having experienced death and life are still their own standard.
Everything they do keeps going back to their self-centeredness, “I want this, I want to eat that, it’s too hot or too cold,” that person’s walk of faith is suffering because they haven’t received the faith that this is enough. You have to go into this for your past to no longer face any problems. That’s our walk of faith.
Where am I? I believe we’re all saved so we’re sitting here, but have you gone through baptism yet? If you haven’t, you’ll still be afraid. The scars of my past will come into my dreams and torment me, my traumas continue to seize me. The time when I had to go to the bathroom during a sermon was the first time it happened to me, and the next week, I was traumatized by that experience, “What happens if that happens again today?” And I began to get seized.
Some people get seized, what happens then? People get nervous and afraid, they’re seized by it. I wasn’t seized. I passed by thinking, “My stomach hurts, and if something happens, let it happen, and if my stomach hurts again, I’ll just let it hurt,” then my fear went away, but I realized why people get traumatized and afraid.
If people get into a car accident on the freeway, it’s hard for them to get back on the road. Have you ever experienced almost drowning or being in a fire, or a near death experience? That’s how you’re traumatized, so whether big or small, everyone has trauma, but will you live your life seized by it, or will you be liberated? If you’re seized, you have no freedom, you live your life in fear and terror. You have to overcome that.
The LORD will fight. If you get into a car accident on the freeway, it’s hard for you to drive. How do you overcome that? “I’m not the master; the Lord will do this work,” then you go with faith. Will you live the rest of your life, afraid of driving? If the Lord makes you drive, then you receive the filling of the Holy Spirit so you can drive, but if you can’t drive for the rest of your life because you’re seized by the disbelief of your trauma, then you’re seized by that.
These things happen in our everyday lives, so many things can happen, but how do you overcome? You can’t overcome just by going to church; you can’t transcend just by worshiping. The LORD will fight for us. The LORD fights for us because I’m too scared, I cannot do this. We know we cannot do this. “See what the LORD will do,” this is how we’re liberated from our spiritual problems.
From an outsider perspective, someone may think, “Why is this person seized by mental problems?” This is why we need faith. The LORD within me will fight and guide me. When you have this faith, you’re bound to overcome. So, you all must have faith of the baptism. We can give a lot of examples. Let’s say you’re dating a guy and he dumps you. Even though he dumped you, you’ll say you dumped him until the very end. We can switch it up, maybe you got dumped by your girlfriend, but you say you dumped her. I want to keep it gender neutral. Then you’re going to be seized by Satan by that embarrassment and heartbreak and humiliation, but it’s because you’re so self-centered. God broke you apart because you weren’t fit for each other; you’re trying to force yourselves to be together, and you’re seized your entire life with your standards.
How do I overcome that? It’s not about me; God did not connect us, so it’s God. Then, if you want to meet another girl or boy, you may have trauma, then you don’t want to be with them. For example, I’m not saying you should meet everybody, but if it’s true that this is someone whom God has prepared, God will connect you; if not, He won’t. This is something in our everyday lives, that the remnants must experience.
I explain this so you put this into practice. Don’t just sit there, being seized. Even if you get depression, don’t be seized by it. My Master is God, and the reason people are overcome is because Satan seizes people. I’m a witness of this, I don’t say this because it’s easy to explain, but it’s something everything goes through. You shouldn’t have failed, you shouldn’t have done that at all, but God is doing something within this.
For example, I’m a pastor, but I had my life before I became a pastor. Whenever I did whatever I wanted, I couldn’t complete anything. I would be at 90% done, but then I would fall back. Things were always like this and I was frustrated, regretting these things, why? Because it was my thoughts. But from God’s perspective, I cannot go halfway. God allowed me to experience the other ways and pulled me back before I got too far so I could be a pastor, but from a self-centered perspective, I wondered, “Why can I not accomplish whatever I want?” I didn’t know God was working this way.
Should such a person like me go into finance? If my heart went into that, I couldn’t be a pastor, but I couldn’t remain there so God created an incident to pull me out. Then I want to go somewhere else again, but God makes it so things barely don’t work out. But being a pastor was so easy, even if I didn’t want it to, it took place so naturally, so it’s by God’s grace and I don’t even know what happened. God was pulling me full-force in the direction God called me, so things naturally took place.
Are any of you thinking, “It’s easy to be a pastor because you don’t need to be very smart,” then did I not need brains while doing work in the world? When I was in the world, I went to places that were too difficult for people to go. I’m not talking about intellect, I’m saying there is another work towards which God drives us. But we may misunderstand this as failure; it wasn’t failure but God was taking me to the true success that belongs to me.
But if a pastor holds onto the scars of past failures, can he become a pastor? How could someone who has not organized that past become a pastor? It’s possible to talk about the Bible because you learned about it in seminary, and the pastor may not be smart or intelligent enough, but how can a pastor who has not organized their past, who is still seized by their past, give a message?
Everything in my past was something God allowed me to experience so I may go fully into healing. From God’s perspective, He called me as a pastor so I shouldn’t have remained in my company, no matter how much I cried and gritted my teeth.
How do you see your past? Quickly go into the state of baptism. But we keep having thoughts that do not have God in our self-centeredness, it’s always “me, I did this, I did that.” Even before I received salvation, God had to predestine me and drag me forward. But it’s just that at this time, God gave me salvation, but everything I’ve experienced in my past was used for the true goal of God.
I’ve been talking this long about baptism. The saved people of God must experience true baptism by faith to overcome yourself. In the wilderness, there are so many things that aren’t good from your standard. However, from God’s perspective, everything is perfect, that’s the difference. Have you experienced baptism or not? If you haven’t, you’ll constantly be grumbling and complaining, it’s always a problem for them and everything they say in their lives is a lie. Who is the father of lies? The devil, so you keep living a life of lies.
But if you have experienced this, everything is an answer because in the wilderness, you discover tremendous mysteries like the three feasts and the tabernacle, but if someone hasn’t experienced the baptism yet, they’ll worry about what to eat, they want to go back to Egypt. You must be baptized for the wilderness to be an answer. How bland was manna? It’s organic, how great is that? Quail, I have a quail in my house. Quail eggs are small but they are three times as nutritious than chicken eggs. They were so used to eating KFC back in Egypt that they complained about not having that in the wilderness even though they had the nutritious meal of manna and quail.
During the night, the pillar of fire and during the day, the pillar of cloud. The wilderness was a perfect place to experience how God works, but now where do we go? We conquer, not conquering people, but we conquer the three states of being self-centered. How? With God’s Word, the Word of God must go into that person. How can I go into the fortress of Jericho? They had to follow God’s Word. How do you go into people? Deliver the Word. When you relay the Word of God’s gospel to them, then that person will die and the life of the Word will go in.
How do you conquer? Through prayer. Pray holding onto God’s Word, follow the Ark of the covenant, meaning God will do this Himself. Use this to conquer Jericho and save people. The people in Jericho had melted in fear, completely seized by terror. They had external things that appeared strong, but they didn’t know who they were. You must save such people.
Trust in God. The world says you have to do this or that, all those words are the words of the world, without God. They just build their own Jericho fortress. God is alive, He has saved you and has given you the talent to save the world. The specialization, do you know what a specialist is? Let’s say you’re someone who makes shoes. You then have to know people’s feet. If you’re a hairdresser, you must know what hairstyle would work with someone’s head, it’s not trial and error. “This hairstyle suits a young person.”
If all you do is an intense perm, no young people will come to you. Even if you’re running a hair salon, you should know the different types of perms. My daughter’s hair was too long, she looked like a goat, and she wanted to go somewhere expensive. I used to cut my hair for $8, now it’s $10, so I took her to that cheap place, and the owner was completely different. There was another man, and he had a thick country dialect, and I realized he’d been there for two years, and he can’t run a business with this hair salon alone.
“I have to train other barbers, so I’m a professor at a grooming school,” and even now, his income mostly comes from raising students. When I hear him talk, he sounds like a country bumpkin, but when he talks about his specialty, it’s different. I told him, “Don’t spend so long on my daughter’s hair, just cut it,” but he didn’t because he wanted to do it right. I would just cut straight lines across and be done with it, but it took a long time, he straightened it and made all these cuts because he had this confidence.
“This is how I need to cut this little girl’s hair,” and I felt this was worth it. Ultimately I paid $35 plus a tip for evangelism. If a specialist only does one thing that doesn’t match the field, that’s not right; no one does that in America, you have to have your specialization. God gives you specialization for missions and evangelism to save the world.
We’re talking about faith, what kind of faith? Faith regarding salvation, and after receiving salvation, it’s the faith where I’m dead and Christ lives in me, and it’s the faith where the goal in my life is to live in the world to save the world. I’m a witness, all my afflictions before my proper baptism, all the confusion before I was able to conquer. God gives all these things through faith, then our walk of faith is so simple. The only thing that remains is this battle of faith.
Apostle Paul confessed there was sin within him, it’s this state, or the baptized state. If my state falls, I go back into sin, Satan, and separation, and the problems of my present reality will overcome me. Then I’m too busy trying to survive in the world, but once this faith comes upon us, God guides us according to His Word.
Prayer
God we thank You, bless the remnants and may we be the ones in faith as the Word You gave us. May we no longer live for ourselves but give our lives and bodies for instruments of faith for Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.