This next story happened to a very dear friend of mine. Melissa is 32 years old married to Tom 31 years old, and they have a beautiful 2 year old son Thomas. About 6 or 7 months ago Tom started to feel sick. Nothing he tried for medication seemed to help him get better. He would have good days and then awful days. Test after test came back negative, everything from Lyme’s disease to acid reflux was ruled out. But still he continued to get worse. Finally one day the lymph nodes under his arms and in his neck became swollen. The team of doctors he was seeing decided to operate and remove the gland in his neck so they could study it. Their great fear was that it might be lymphoma. I went to see Melissa a few days before the operation in order to pray with her. As we talked, a coworker came into the room and said she woke up that day sensing that she and her husband were to go that evening to visit Tom pray over him. I thought that was fine and took two stone pocket crosses and gave them to Melissa. As I was handing them over, the coworker’s son Peter who happen to be visiting that day, came into the room with a good friend. They are both 9 years old and are school mates. They saw the crosses and asked about them. I took out two more and gave them to the boys and explained what they were and meant. They were thrilled to receive them. Later that night Peter ended up accompanying his parents when they went to pray over Tom. It was a very emotional time for everyone. The next day Peter saw his friend at school and suggested that they go outside behind the bleacher stands and pray for Tom. And they did. Two 9 year old boys and their stone pocket crosses went before God (on public school property) and asked Him to heal Tom. Several days later the tests came back and as of this wring are still inconclusive, but the doctors have ruled out the threat of cancer. When Peter was told that Tom did not have cancer his response was simply “...Yeah, I already knew that, Mom. My friend and I prayed together with those pocket crosses and God said He would heal Tom and we believe Him.”
How To be Saved The Bible gives specific reference as to what we must do to receive eternal life. St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, chapter 10, verses 9-10:
“That if 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. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”
Being saved is not a very complicated process. God looks at what is in the heart of a person to see if they truly believe and mean what they are proclaiming. And by making this statement of faith we become justified (righteous) before God and our sins are forgiven. We simply have to honestly believe in our hearts and say out loud with our mouths, that Jesus Christ is our risen Lord and Savior. The end result is a personal relationship with Jesus and salvation for all eternity.
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