Welcome
This is "New Heart, New Life" and the purpose of this website is to glorify God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. To this end, my desire is to…
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…call people into a personal relationship with the living God. The Gospel, the good news about salvation through Jesus Christ, is not a call to religion; the Gospel is a call to relationship. It is in knowing God that we find true and everlasting joy. In fact, to have eternal life is to live forever in an intimate personal relationship with God. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3). My desire is that you, the reader, would come to discover the joy of a personal relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ. For more information, please see the blog.
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Second, my desire here is also to call Christians to pursue holiness. There is a grave misconception afoot in the evangelical community. It is the idea that the eternal salvation of the Christian can be isolated from the passionate pursuit of practical holy living (sanctification); it cannot.
Yes, eternal life is the gift of God and can only be received by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. However, many evangelicals teach that a person can be saved and yet ignore the command of Hebrews 12:14 to pursue the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. Paul clearly states that eternal life is the outcome of sanctification (Romans 6:22). No one will receive the gift of eternal life without pursuing sanctification in this life. To put that another way, those who have truly received the gift of eternal life will also be actively engaged in putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit (Romans 8:13). And scripture teaches that the Christian’s necessary pursuit of practical holiness does NOT nullify salvation by grace through faith apart from works. The reason? God’s gift of eternal life includes the power for us to pursue sanctification. For a scriptural explanation of the connection between God’s free gift of eternal life and the believer’s pursuit of sanctification, see the blog
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Finally, it’s true that one becomes a Christian the moment he or she is born again and thus receives Jesus Christ (See John 1:11-13). It is no mistake, however, that in the 1st century Christianity was known as “the road” or “the way.”
The Christian life is a road we travel while we live; it’s an odyssey, a long and challenging journey, on the narrow way that leads to eternal life. And as we travel this road, we do so in the strength that God supplies, until we finally see Him face to face. And there, unto the ages of ages, we will know joy and pleasure in Him.
Come, let's experience joy in Him as we run the race of faith together.
There is a joy in the journey
There's a light we can love on the way
There is a wonder and wildness to life
And freedom for those who obey
And all those who seek it shall find it
A pardon for all who believe
Hope for the hopeless and sight for the blind
To all who've been born of the Spirit
And who share incarnation with Him
Who belong to eternity stranded in time
And weary of struggling with sin
Forget not the hope that's before you
And never stop counting the cost
Remember the hopelessness when you were lost
There is a joy in the journey
There's a light we can love on the way
There is a wonder and wildness to life
And freedom for those who obey
And freedom for those who obey
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Michael Card