God's original design for your life was to be in a living relationship with Him. The purpose of this book is to help you find that relationship and walk in it. It is not to add to the layers of roles that we play in life, especially religious roles and religious play-acting. I pray that this book will encourage you to become transparent with God, your Creator, and through that transparency to experience God's wonderful love and grace which will mold you into His original design for your life.

Galatians 1:15,16 says, "But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might [________________________Paul's purpose in life was inserted here in this blank]." This is a quote from Paul who wrote the letter to the first century Galatian church. He had been a role player, and a murderer, killing first century Christians and thinking that his life was fulfilling God's purpose for himself and for God. Notice those great statements, "But when God," and "by His grace." This is something that God did! He revealed to Paul his purpose in life. We all want to know why we are here and we want to know our purpose.

We each have a blank_______________________for our purpose in life, and it is different for each and every human. You cannot fill in the blank; only God can. Paul could not fill in the blank until he experienced the awesome presence of God and after walking with God for many years. But Paul finally did fill in his blank. God wants to reveal your purpose to you.

Every one of us starts out as who we really are.

Then we develop different attitudes of who we want to be. The "want to be's" become roles that we play. Quite often these decisions are made subconsciously. All of these roles build up like layers of an onion in our lives. It is God's purpose to take us back to who we really are, to the real "you." That is the "you" that God really loves and it is the only "you" that God can really work with to make you whole and fulfilled in life.

We fear the discovery of who we really are. Over the years we have constructed layers of self-deceit upon ourselves similar to layers of an onion. We have so many ways of hiding behind roles that others or ourselves have constructed. These roles are self-deceiving and we have become so lost behind them that we are incapable of rescuing ourselves. Before we know it we are hiding behind so many layers that we are totally self-deceived and fit into what Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).

However, only God is capable of peeling back the layers. I can remember God speaking to me just a few months after I had met Jesus back in late 1979. It was not an audible voice, but rather it came through a cassette tape that had been previously recorded in a service 2,400 miles away. It was not something high and mighty or religious at all, it was very practical. However, when I heard it, I knew in my "knower" (deep inside) that it was God speaking directly to me. It went like this:

 

"I see the original design for your life. It is like a parchment scroll that unrolls. As it unrolls the script of your life is written on it. However, the edges of the scroll have been burnt and the ashes have been scattered so that no person, not even you, can any longer read the scroll. No human could possibly find all of the ashes, fit them together in the proper places and reconstruct the scroll.

 

However, I have not forgotten it. I am God Almighty, and I am capable of finding the ashes, resurrecting them back into parchment and putting them exactly where they belong so that you and others may see who you really are, and so that your life may return to its original design. This will be done slowly and progressively, and will only be an act of my grace. You need only to walk close to Me and give Me your heart, which also means being gut level honest with Me at all times."

 

I can testify that what God told me in 1980 has been my experience and is still my experience. God cannot lie!

True contentment in life is knowing that the real you is acceptable. It is knowing that you can be real with God. It is knowing that you don't know how to be completely real in one big event, but that as you go through life, God will cause the layers to be taken off little by little as you can tolerate it and accept it. You discover that God accepts you just the way you are, however He wants to peel back the layers to get to the real you. You will find out that God is gentle throughout this process. You will discover that quite often even the gentleness can be painful.

There can be hidden compartments in your life that you do not want anybody, especially God, to uncover and expose. You know it would be too painful. But God would say to you, "Go ahead and trust me to touch that hurt just one time. I may cause more pain in your life by touching it, but after that, healing will come. Is it worth it?" It is like the surgeon asking, "Is it worth it to bear the pain of my knife if it means cutting out the disease?"

God is the only one who can bring light to your "dark places." "When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life'" (John 8:12).

That is why this book is titled "Be Real With God." Certainly it is my desire for you to come to know Jesus if you do not know Him. In this book you will find areas of doctrine that God desires you to know. You will find points of recommended obedience that are crucial if you are to mature in Christ. However, your relationship with God and your obedience to Him must be based upon your being real with yourself and with Him. If you play act with God you will be miserable and miss the only opportunity to really be free and whole.

We can cooperate with God.

The one thing that God can work with is your honesty. One of His names is truth. "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life…'" (John 14:6a). When Jesus was on trial for His life, He had a discussion with the Roman ruler, Pilate, in which they spoke about the definition of truth. "Pilate then said to Him, 'Are you a king then?' Jesus answered, 'You say it that I am a king. To this end I was born, and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice'" (John 18:37).

There is a law on planet Earth that always works: it is called sowing and reaping (Galatians 6:7-8). One will ultimately reap whatsoever he sows. This law applies to truth also. If you sow the truth you will reap the truth. If you sow deception and dishonesty, you will reap darkness, and the truth will not shine in your life. "Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice" (John 18:37 b).

King David made the following statement in Psalm 32:2-3 after trying to hide his terrible sins from God. David could no longer live with himself, but he discovered that God honors the truth and that the truth will make one free.

"Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long" (Psalms 32:2-3). I suggest that you read the entire Psalm 32.

There is usually a price for being truly honest. Proverbs 23:23 says, "Buy the truth, and do not sell it, Also wisdom and instruction and understanding." One price you need to be prepared to pay is humility.

I believe that evil came to pass in our world and continues to exist by man's dishonesty. The cartoon below illustrates this. To the degree that you are not real, is the degree of potential evil or darkness that exists in your life. The wider the gap, the greater the potential is for evil.

This principle applies to all people.

You may be Jewish and have been raised in a God-fearing home with a culture that has taught you to never "convert" and to not listen to "those Christians." I understand you heeding that advice. Too many Christians have been hard hearted towards your faith and culture.

You may be Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, New Age, or agnostic. You may be worshiping beings in the spirit world or idols. You may be an atheist or a self-sufficient person who has never felt a need for God. You may be reading this book as a new believer and have a desire to grow into maturity. You may have had tremendous faith at some point in your life, but now you doubt God. I respect where you are.

If you are spiritual God is not asking you to become secular.

If you are secular or scientific, He is not asking you to trust in spirits who are untrustworthy. He is not asking you to change your culture or to become like other Christians whom you may have met. He is not asking you to conform to some church or denomination. He is not asking you to become "religious."

What He is asking you to do is to be honest with your needs in life. We all have "felt needs." The three main categories are love, security and significance. We need unconditional love. We need to be loved by someone who knows all about us and still accepts us. We need security for material and emotional needs and for eternal destiny. We need significance, or we need to know that we matter and are worth something. God has a deep desire to be the supplier of those needs, as we will see in future chapters.

You are turning to someone or something for these needs already. It may be that you have been relying on your own soul power, which includes your intellect, education, and talents. I am not degrading these, but they must be put into proper perspective. These can appear to work to a degree. It may be that you have been relying on some spiritual religion that puts you into contact with real spirit beings. I understand that this is real and it can appear to work to an extent. In the end however, these "other gods" are unreliable. They are hard taskmasters. They always keep you in fear and demand your worship. They promise an easy way for the supply of your felt needs. However it like using a credit card; eventually the bill will come and you will have to pay.

God, the Creator, is reliable. His name is Truth. His Word is Truth. When He reveals Himself to you it will be in accordance with His Word so that you will not need to wonder if you have made contact with the real God or some "other god."

One thing I have found about God is that He rarely argues. He usually just reveals Himself and all of the arguments stop. He has a deeper desire to reach you with the truth than you have to receive it. He created you to have a close personal relationship with Him. He did not create you to have to rely on some religion or spirit. He did not leave your eternal destiny in the hands of other men who try to convince you that they have the truth.

To all of you seekers, God is able to reveal His name to you. You do not need to rely on men's arguments.

To all of you who are moving on toward maturity, He is the teacher. He wants to lead you into all truth and relate to you personally.

Now, I encourage you to exercise honesty with God. There is no correct way to pray. Just talk to Him as you would if He were your best friend sitting next to you. Tell Him what you believe and do not believe. Tell Him how you really feel, give Him your doubts, fears and bitterness. Tell Him your needs and how you have been attempting to satisfy them.

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13).

One of the greatest needs of man is to know who he is and why he is here.

In 1970, nine years before God came into my life, I had an interesting transaction with God. I was 30 years old and had just experienced an extremely lucrative business deal. It was something that I had dreamed about since I was young. One morning I was in the yard cutting my grass over a very noisy lawnmower. I was asking the question, "Why am I here, and who am I?" I suppose I was talking to God even though I did not have a relationship with Him.

I looked at my comfortable suburban house and I said, "I go to work every morning so that I can make the mortgage payments on that house. I do that so that I can come home to that house every night to eat and sleep. I do that so that I can get up in the morning and go make more money in order to make more mortgage payments." I began to cry, "Is this what life is all about? Is this what it feels like to be successful? I seem to have a body that has been incredibly made. It has thousands of miles of blood vessels, a heart that beats to keep me alive, and a brain that no man could invent. I seem to have been created by God. Did God create me to live like a hamster in a cage on a wheel going around and around getting nowhere?" I began to weep uncontrollably and cried out to God.

God, in His infinite wisdom, waited nine years before He answered my question. However He did answer it in a mighty and powerful way.

To be honest, meeting God did not instantly solve all of my problems and answer all of my questions. I was simply put in touch, living touch, with God who could slowly answer all of my questions. He continues to answer them.

It was August 26, 1979, 5:30 PM. I was 39 years old and had lived my life for myself, my own way. On the surface my life did not seem too bad, but underneath it all God saw my desperation. I wanted to know where I would go after I died and where I would spend eternity. I had heard all sorts of differing opinions. Some said you just fall asleep. Some said you just go to a "better place." Others said you would simply cease to exist. Others talked about a Heaven and a Hell.

Think about it. That is the most important question you can ask during your life here on earth. You had better not take someone else's word for it. You better be sure. Eternity is not a long time it is forever. I knew deep down inside that I had better not cast my eternal destiny to the opinion of others. Even the people that said they knew the answer could not agree with each other.

I kind of believed in Heaven and Hell, but I thought that God graded on the curve system. For example, if there were some people that were worse than I was, like murderers, etc., then I would fall in the middle somewhere and at least get a "C" grade and make it to Heaven. I finally got real with God and asked the question, "Where do you go when you die?"

My teenage son was helping me read the Bible for the first time. I started at 12:30 PM, and at 5:30 PM I stopped and said, "Jesus is alive, He is God and He wrote the Bible. Not only that, Jesus is the final victor over all evil. God wants to be my father and take over my life."

I heard God speak to me. He said, "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away'" (Revelation 21:3,4).

All of a sudden, I experienced what John 7:37-39 says, "On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.' By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified."

Jesus became real to me. I saw Him with my spiritual eyes in a way that made Him as real as any other person I knew. He said, "Hello there, my Name is Jesus. I love you." I could feel the "rivers of living water" welling up inside of me. I told Him, "I have made a mess of my life. Thank you for becoming my Father and promising to take care of me. I will do whatever You say." I can remember the feeling of having a real Father who would now take care of me, someone to whom I could turn to for all of my needs. I had been relying on "other gods."

This experience caused a passion in my heart that has been the driving force of my life. When we encounter God face to face, doctrines, religions, denominations, family customs, everything goes out the window. This passion has caused me to pursue God with my whole heart. As I pursued Him, I became more acquainted with Him and His personality.

The apostle Paul had an experience on his journey to Damascus. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He knew the law and religious traditions better than anybody did in his day. He did not, however, know God until this experience. "As he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?'" (Acts 9:3,4).

Notice the first thing that Paul said when the light of God knocked him down. "And he said, 'Who are You, Lord?' Then the Lord said, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads'" (Acts 9:5).

He said, "Who are You, Lord?" Paul did not know who this Being was, but He knew that he better call Him Lord because of the power he had felt in His presence. Then Paul wanted to know who this Lord was. Paul knew he had encountered the most powerful Being in the universe, he just did not know who He was. He certainly was not the same God described by his religious tradition.

God wants to have an encounter with you. I am asking you to be honest and open and invite Him to do so. I guarantee you will never be the same!

When I stop to think of why it took me so long to find my need for Jesus, I can only come up with this conclusion: we need to understand our desperate need for God before we can really see who He is. Actually, we all have a desperate need for God and to understand that Jesus is God Himself. The problem is that we have found ways to bury our desperation. We have discovered how to manipulate people, how to control people, how to perform in life so that our apparent needs are met. When we find that these do not work, we try religion, or we turn to different stimulants, all of which ends up making us slaves. Sometimes we feel as if they are working. If we are honest, we will admit that there is something inside of us that is not fulfilled by anything but the Creator.

It has been said by many that we need to fall flat on our face and fail in life before we find Jesus. I do not believe that is true (although it is the experience of many). I believe all it takes is for a person to be gut level honest with herself/himself. People all over the social and moral scale can find the true living God, the Creator of the universe, Jesus Christ. All they have to do is to be honest with themselves and with God. God will do the rest. It is His job to reveal Himself to people.

Religion (of all types) tells us that we have to struggle to do certain things or to be a certain way to find the truth or to find God. "Other gods" keep us in a struggle to control, manipulate and appease them. But the Bible tells us it is God Himself who draws us to Him and that He supernaturally reveals Himself to us. It tells us that God knows what we need and He knows how to help us.

He knows us intimately. He knows what it will take for us to see the truth. We do not have to take someone else's word for the truth. That would be scary to put my eternal destiny into the hands of another human's opinion! God will embrace you with His loving kindness right where you are in life, whether you are rich or poor, young or old, moral or immoral.

God is certainly capable of revealing His name to you. Be honest and listen for the words, "Hello there, my Name is Jesus. I love you."

Before one is ready for good news (Gospel means good news) he/she needs to first face the bad news. Doctors can prescribe wonderful healing medicines, but if we do not face the bad news first, we will never be healed.

The bad news first. Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created man (Adam) in God's own likeness and image. God created Adam's body out of clay. He gave Adam the potential to have what other animals did not have; that is, to be a three part being. He made man to be a spiritual being with a soul and a body. God breathed His own Spirit into Adam. He gave Adam the program for living, but Adam wanted to be independent from God and God's Word (the Tree of Life). When he became independent, God's Spirit had to leave Adam. This was the beginning of the separation between God and man.

You were born in the image of Adam, a person separated from God. Adam is your forefather. You have the potential to be in the image of God, but you were not born that way.

Now the good news. (By the way, these following historical events were prophesied with perfect accuracy hundreds and even thousands of years prior to their fulfillment).

God did not give up on Adam and He did not give up on you. Adam knew something was wrong after he became independent and started to run his own life without God. He tried to cover his shame with fig leaves. We try all kinds of religious activities to make our independence tolerable, but nothing really works.

God warned Adam that if he disobeyed Him that he would die two deaths, spiritual death and physical death. Adam deserved death but he received mercy! How? Why? Genesis 3:21 tells us that God killed an animal, shed blood, and covered Adam and Eve with the skin. God transferred Adam's sin to a sinless creature. This act of shedding blood was foreshadowing what God would do in the future. Sacrificing an animal was the act that foretold of a Messiah who would shed His blood for Adam. Adam's death sentence was reversed. Adam is alive today in Heaven with God. The curse due to sin was transferred to the animal.

It is not what we do but who we are that counts. The thing that keeps us separated from God is not what we do, but it is who we are. As descendents of Adam we are separated from God. We are not merely separated during this life on earth, but as the Bible tells us we are separated eternally and destined to spend eternity without the presence and love of God. This is called Hell. We need God to do for us what He did for Adam and Eve. We need our sins transferred through the shedding of blood.

God does not want us to become religious, but He wants us to know that He has provided a blood covenant for us so that we may relate to Him. This is the Gospel; this is the Good News!

God arranged, before time began, to have a way for man to be reunited to Himself. A blood covenant is the only thing that can change a person's spiritual nature. The blood covenant will give us a new birth and change our spiritual identity. The blood covenant will allow God to join His Spirit to our spirit and to go back to the pattern He had for Adam; to be in the image of God.

Here is the Good News. God created you to be in union with Him so that He could bless you with His abundance. Now God, the Creator, wants to cut a blood covenant with you! He wants to take everything in your life that is bad, and give you all of His good and abundance.

What then is a blood covenant?

In a blood covenant each party takes on the identity of the other. What mankind needed was someone who was indeed connected to God so that mankind could obtain that connection. We needed someone whose spirit was connected with God's Spirit, someone who was actually inhabited by God's Spirit. However, the person who was connected to God would have to take on man's nature, that of being disconnected, and suffer the penalty of being disconnected.

Here is God's plan.

First we need to know who Jesus is. The Bible tells us in John 1:1-2 that Jesus is God Himself, that He is the Word of God, and that He is the Son of God who created everything by His words. The Bible also tells us that God has other aspects; that of The Father and that of The Spirit.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made" (John 1:1-3).

"He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:10-14).

The Word of God being spoken to Mary by an angel (Luke 1:26-38) caused the incarnation of Jesus as a child into the womb of this Jewish virgin. God created Adam with His Words and His breath (Gen. 1:28 & 2:7). He caused Jesus to enter the world the same way. Mary became pregnant with the Word of God. In this manner of birth, Jesus did not inherit the nature of Adam (separated from God), but He did become a man. What a miracle! Jesus was the first man to be born since Adam without being a typical descendant of Adam. The Bible calls Jesus the Second Adam. Jesus was a descendent of Adam in that Mary was His mother, but He was not a descendent of Adam in that God was His Father.

Here is the perfect person with whom to make a covenant. We could take His nature if He would be willing to take our nature. The only problem was: would He be willing to take our nature, that of being eternally separated from God not only on earth, but also in Hell?

Here is more good news. God loved us so much that He would be willing to pay the penalty for us. He would be willing to give up His only Son to be separated from Him, the Father. Jesus never did anything independent from His Father as Adam did, even though Satan tempted Him sorely to do so. When it came time for Jesus to make the blood covenant with us, He was a perfect man capable of swapping natures with us. The people crucified Jesus, the most cruel torture saved only for the most desperate criminals. Jesus shed His blood as His part of the covenant.

What Jesus said just before He died on the Cross is recorded in Matthew 27:46: "About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' --which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" This is evidence that Jesus took on our nature. Jesus was separated from God.

Jesus went to Hell. "He seeing this before spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption" (Acts 2:31). Jesus defeated death, Hell and the grave.

Jesus did not stay dead; He was resurrected! "He is not here, for He has risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead. And, behold, He goes before you into Galilee. There you shall see Him. Lo, I have told you" (Matthew 28:6,7).

"This is now the three times Jesus was revealed to His disciples, He being risen from the dead" (John 21:14).

Jesus was not only resurrected; He ascended back to Heaven as a man. "And saying these things, as they watched, He was taken up. And a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they were looking intently into the heaven, He having gone, even behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them, who also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into the heaven? This same Jesus who is taken up from you into Heaven, will come in the way you have seen Him going into Heaven" (Acts 1:9-11).

Jesus sent the Holy Spirit back to earth so that we could be reunited with God not only in this life but also for eternity. "And suddenly a sound came out of the heaven as borne along by the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And tongues as of fire appeared to them, being distributed; and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:2-4).

Finally, God moved back into man to inhabit him as He had done with Adam. However, this time the Spirit of God had a new quality; that of resurrection from the dead. Satan no longer had dominion over man, but man now rules over him.

With the completion of this plan, mankind actually became something greater than the original Adam. We have the resurrected life of Jesus residing in us. We are Heaven-bound and victors over all of Satan's activities while we are living on earth. God does not promise us a comfortable life, yet He does promise us the ability to overcome in any situation. He promises joy, peace, love, faith and purpose in life. He promises He will never leave us. He promises a close, intimate and personal relationship with Him. He makes this life on earth worth living!

We don't have to understand all of this intellectually. A very religious man who lived in Jesus' day named Nicodemus could not figure everything out with his brain. Jesus had an answer for him and for you and me. Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about the Blood Covenant.

"There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, 'Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.' Jesus answered and said to him, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' Nicodemus said to Him, 'How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?' Jesus answered, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.' Nicodemus answered and said to Him, 'How can these things be?' Jesus answered and said to him, 'Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved'" (John 3:1-17).

All the "other gods" don't really love you. They have a selfish, self-seeking attitude towards you. But God, the Creator, has a perfect love towards you. He loves you with a passionate unconditional unselfishness. He wants only the best for you. He put His Son Jesus on the Cross in your place. You can trust Him!

What must you do to receive this great miracle of the blood covenant? First, be genuine. Do not fake it. Be honest with God about your doubts, fears and needs. Jesus is the Truth. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. God makes a safe way for you to believe. You must trust the truth that He put His Son Jesus on the Cross in your place.

The final two things are found in Romans 10:9-11, which says, "Because if you confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation. For the Scripture says, 'Everyone believing on Him shall not be put to shame.'"

You must know in your heart that Jesus was raised from the dead. If you just know this as a Bible story it will not work. If you try to work up faith it will not work. You must know that He is alive because He is revealing Himself to you.

Once you know Jesus arose from the dead and is presently alive, you must make Him Lord. "Lord" is an old English word for "boss" or "master". You cannot earn your new birth but once you receive it, you must realize that you belong to God and you can no longer be independent as Adam tried to be. Making Jesus Lord means that you must turn from all "other gods" to Him, in His Word, for your needs, as you walk in obedience to Him. We will go into more detail on this in later chapters.

If you are not sure about these things, here is how to pray: "Oh, God, I am a seeker. I want the truth about who you are and about spiritual things. I want you to reveal yourself to me. I want you to tell me your name. I want this to be a personal thing, not something from a book or from man." Now, pour your heart out to God and tell Him how you honestly feel. Include your doubts, fears, etc.

If you wish to pray to receive the blood covenant, you may do it right now: "Oh God, I believe that you sent Jesus to take my old nature and I want to receive His nature. I want to be born back into your family so that I can be connected with You. I believe that Jesus shed His blood for me as His part of the covenant. I believe that when He died He took my old nature and the penalty that went with it. I believe that He was raised from the dead to give me His life. I accept this covenant by making Jesus my boss, my Lord." (This is the way we shed our blood, by laying down our life and allowing Him to take over. We do not have to actually cut our bodies.)

"Hello there, my Name is Jesus. I love you."

Just be real with God!