Four Things You Need to Do to Receive Jesus Christ into Your Life
Step 4: Through Prayer, Receive Jesus into Your Heart and Life
There is a comedy group that I’ve seen perform at many conferences I’ve attended, called “The Skit Guys.” They have a way of making you laugh while at the same time using their skits to get across a biblically-meaningful point. One of their recurring skits is “Little Billy.” In this skit, one of the guys pretends to be a Sunday school teacher and the other is a child in his class. At one point, they are singing a song about Jesus and “Little Billy” pretends to put Jesus in his mouth. The “Teacher” then responds with, “Don’t put Jesus in your mouth! Why would you put Jesus in your mouth?” “Little Billy” then responded with “How else will I get him in my heart?”
When I saw this skit, I was fairly new to youth ministry and it caused me to pause. Growing up in the church, I always heard people reference the phrase “You need to receive Jesus into your heart.” The reason this skit caused me to pause was that for the first time, I realized that while I had an understanding of what that meant, I’m not sure I could articulate that to someone who hadn’t grown up in the faith. If I were to say that phrase to a student who was visiting, they would likely look at me like Nicodemus speaking with Jesus in John 3, when he said, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” This sent me on a bit of a journey to figure out how to be able to articulate the path of salvation to someone who didn’t grow up with the same exposure to the faith that I did.
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
“[I] f you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
These verses provide us with some context as to where the Christian phrase “Receive Jesus into your heart” likely came from. The words that likely give people trouble are “receive” and “heart.”
What does it mean to “receive”?
This is essentially the same thing as belief. Believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that it is through His sacrifice alone that we are able to have our sins forgiven and our relationship with God restored. Spurgeon says, “Faith is described as ‘receiving’ Jesus. It is the empty cup placed under the flowing stream; the penniless hand held out for heavenly alms.” When we receive Jesus, there is an acceptance of the gift of forgiveness he offers to us on the cross.
What do we mean by “heart”?
Our heart is the source of life — whatever is in our heart is pumped through the rest of the body. The Bible often uses the phrase “heart” to mean the core of a person. Another way to look at this would be, “Have you allowed Jesus to have access to all of you, all the way to the very core of your being?”
One of the questions I ask when it comes to faith is, “How?” In this case, “How will I know if I have ‘Received Jesus into my heart’”? How will I know if, at the core of who I am, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and He paid the price for my sins to be forgiven? My response to that is that there will be a change. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” If I have truly accepted the gift of salvation offered by Jesus on the cross, then there will begin to be a change in me. It may be gradual and subtle, but within me, desires, actions, and thoughts will begin to change. They will no longer be ones that honor me but ones that honor God.
Adam Deering