A Good Foundation
by
Zac Poonen
Copyright – Zac Poonen (1990)
Paperback ISBN: 9789384302016
ePub ISBN: 9789384302221
Kindle ISBN: 9789384302535
PDF ISBN: 9789384302849
This book has been copyrighted to prevent misuse.
It should not be reprinted or translated without written permission from the author.
Permission is however given for any part of this book to be downloaded and printed provided it is for FREE distribution, provided NO ALTERATIONS are made, provided the AUTHOR’S NAME AND ADDRESS are mentioned, and provided this copyright notice is included in each printout.
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* This Book and You…
1. Repentance
Repentance and Faith
False and True Repentance
The Fruit of Repentance
What Restitution Involves
Forgiving Others
A Changed Attitude Towards Satan
2. Faith
Faith to Receive God’s Gifts
The Assurance of Faith
The Confession of Faith
3. Election and Justification
Election
Justification
4. Discipleship
‘Hating’ our Relatives
Hating Our Own Life
Giving Up All Our Possessions
5. Baptism in Water
What Baptism Means
The Mode of Baptism
Baptism in the Three-fold Name
The Obedience of Faith
6. Baptism in the Holy Spirit
Power for Life and for Service
Our New-Covenant Birthright
Rivers of Living Water
The Enduement of Power
The Variety of the Spirit’s Working
7. Sanctification
God’s Purpose for Us
Finishing with Sin
Temptation and Sin
The Old Man and the New Man
Conscious and Unconscious Sin
Mercy and Grace
Progressive Sanctification
8. God’s Word and Prayer
God’s Word – Our Spiritual Food
God’s Word – The Sword of the Spirit
God’s Plan for Our Lives
Prayer – Speaking to God
9. Fellowship and the Church
The Church – The Body of Christ
Becoming Part of a Local Church
Receiving All of God’s Children
The New Testament Church
The Importance of Fellowship
10. The End of this Age
After Death What?
The Signs of Christ’s Coming
The First Resurrection and the Judgment Seat of Christ
The Millennium
The Second Resurrection and the Final Judgment
The End of Time
The Call to Overcome
About the Book
The gospel is the good news that man can now live as God originally intended him to. The one who surrenders totally to the claims of Christ can live a life of constant triumph. Yet many who have accepted Christ as their Saviour do not enter into this glorious life that the gospel offers.
Why not? The reason very often is that a good foundation was not laid at the beginning of their Christian life.
Our life after we are born again can be compared to a house being built. We all know that the most important part of a house is its foundation.
If there is a crack on the third floor, the cause can usually be traced to a faulty foundation.
It is the same with our lives. Years after we have trusted in Christ, we can suffer the consequences of a faulty foundation laid at the beginning.
The New Testament promises us a life of triumph over sin.
See God’s promise in Romans 6:14:
“Sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.”
It also commands us to live a life of continual joy, and one totally free from anxiety. See Philippians 4:4, 6
“Rejoice in the Lord always…. Be anxious for nothing….”
Remember that God commands only what He will enable us to do.
So His commands are in a sense promises of what He can give us grace to achieve! The above commands are therefore a promise that God can enable us to live a life of perpetual joy and one totally free from anxiety.
There are many more glorious promises like these in the New Testament. But the ones we’ve mentioned will suffice to show that the gospel is good news indeed.
Yet the sad truth is that most Christians who claim to have accepted the gospel do not live the type of life described in the above verses.
The purpose of this book is to enable you to lay a good foundation in your life, so that God’s full purpose for your life can be accomplished.
Read on then and let the Holy Spirit speak to your heart.
This could be the beginning of a new chapter in your life altogether….
Jesus said that the right way to enter His sheepfold (His kingdom) was through the door. But He said that some would try to come in by climbing over the wall (John 10:1).
The way that God has laid down for man to be saved is by repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the only way. God can never accept a man who tries to climb in any other way.
John the Baptist who came to prepare the way of the Lord preached repentance. That was the only way that the nation of Israel could be prepared to receive Jesus as their Saviour. There is no other way for us either.
Most of today’s believers don’t seem to have the depth or the dedication or the power that the early Christians had.
What do you think is the reason for this?
The primary reason is that they haven’t repented properly.
They have believed in Christ all right. But they have believed without repenting first. And so their conversion has been shallow.
Just look at these words of a well-known hymn:
“The vilest offender who truly believes
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.”
Is that really true – that the vilest offender can receive a pardon merely by “truly believing?”
Doesn’t he need to repent first?
You may say that true faith involves repentance too. But unless that is explained to the vilest offender, he can go away thinking that he is born again just because he believed. And he can go away deceived.
The message Jesus Himself preached was: “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). He commanded His apostles to preach the same message (Luke 24:47). And that’s exactly what they did (Acts 20:21).
The Word of God is very clear on this. Repentance and faith cannot be separated if you want to be well and truly converted. God has joined these two together. And what God has joined together no man should separate.
Repentance and faith are actually the first two elements of the foundation of the Christian life (Hebrews 6:1). If you haven’t repented properly, then your foundation is bound to be faulty. And then, of course, the whole of your Christian life will be shaky.
The Bible says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning (or the ABC) of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). And if we really fear the Lord, we’ll “turn away from sin” (Proverbs 3:7).
So those who haven’t repented and turned from sin, haven’t learnt even the ABC of the Christian life.
If you have repented, you must ensure that you have repented genuinely. For Satan has his counterfeit repentance too, with which he deceives people.
Satan knows that most people live by just one commandment that says, “You shall not get caught!” And so he teaches them ways and means to sin without getting caught by anyone.
Even a thief will feel sorry if he is caught. But that’s not repentance.
We see some examples in the Bible of those whose repentance was false.
When King Saul disobeyed God, he admitted to Samuel that he had sinned. But he didn’t want the people to know that. He still sought man’s honour. He hadn’t really repented. He was just sorry that he was caught (1 Samuel 15:24–30). That was the difference between him and King David who openly acknowledged his sin when he fell (Psalm 51).
King Ahab was another like Saul. He felt really sorry for himself when Elijah warned him that God was going to judge him. He even put sackcloth on himself and mourned for his sins (1 Kings 21:27–29). But he didn’t really repent. He was just afraid of God’s judgment.
Judas Iscariot’s case is a clear example of false repentance. When he saw that Jesus had been condemned to death he felt bad and said, “I have sinned” (Matthew 27:3–5). But he made his confession to the priests – just like some do even today! He didn’t repent – even though he may have felt sad about what he had done. If he had truly repented, he would have gone to the Lord in brokenness and asked for forgiveness. But he didn’t do that.
There’s a lot that we can learn from these examples – as to what repentance is not!
True repentance is a “turning to God from idols” (1 Thessalonians 1:9).
Idols are not just those made of wood and stone found in heathen temples. There are equally dangerous idols that people worship that don’t look so ugly. These are the idols of pleasure, comfort, money, one’s reputation, wanting one’s own way etc.
All of us have worshipped these for many years. To repent means to stop worshipping these idols, and to turn away from them to God.
True repentance will involve our whole personality – our mind, our emotions and our will.
First of all, repentance means that we change our mind about sin and the world. We realise that our sin has separated us from God. We also see that the whole way of life of this world is anti-God. And we want to turn away from that God-dishonouring way of life.
Secondly, repentance involves our emotions. We feel sorrowful about the way we’ve lived (2 Corinthians 7:10). We hate ourselves for our past actions; and more than that, we detest the greater evil that we see within us that no one else can see (Ezekiel 36:31).
We weep and mourn that we have hurt God so much by the way we have lived. That was the reaction of many great men in the Bible when they became aware of their sins. David (Psalm 51), Job (Job 42:6) and Peter (Matthew 26:75) – all wept bitterly when they repented of their sins.
Both Jesus and the apostles have encouraged us to weep and mourn for our sins (Matthew 5:4; James 4:9). That is the way back to God.
Finally, repentance involves our will. We have to yield our stubborn self-will – ‘wanting our own way’ – and make Jesus Lord of our lives. That means that we are willing to do whatever God wants us to do from now on, whatever the cost and however humiliating it may be.
The prodigal son came back home to his father as a broken, yielded young man who was willing to do anything that his father told him to. That is true repentance (Luke 15:11–24).
We don’t have to confess to God every single sin that we’ve ever committed. It would be impossible to remember all of them in any case. The prodigal son didn’t do that. All that he said was, “Father, I have sinned.” And that’s all we need to say too.
But remember that Judas Iscariot also said, “I have sinned.” There was a world of difference however, between his confession and the prodigal son’s confession. God doesn’t listen only to the words we say. He senses the spirit behind the words, and deals with us accordingly.
John the Baptist told the Pharisees to bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance (Matthew 3:8). If we have truly repented, it will change our whole way of life.
One of the first things that we should do, after we have repented is to make restitution for the wrongs that we have done in our life.
We read of Zaccheus in the gospels, that he was convicted of his sins as soon as Jesus entered his house (Luke 19:1–10). Zaccheus was a man who loved money. But he understood what repentance involved. He knew that if he was going to be a disciple of Jesus he would have to make amends for all the wrongs that he had done in his life.
That meant a great loss of money to him, for he had cheated so many people. But he decided to be wholehearted in his repentance. And so he told the Lord that he would give away half his money to the poor and then give back four times what he had cheated others of.
It was only when Zaccheus said that he would make restitution, that Jesus said that salvation had come to that home. A willingness to make restitution is one of the evidences of true salvation (Luke 19:1–10).
The wise man, in the parable that Jesus spoke, dug deep and laid his foundation on the rock beneath the layers of sand (Luke 6:48). The foolish man also built his house in the same area. But he didn’t dig deep enough. He laid his foundation superficially on the sand.
We could apply this parable to true and false repentance. Only when we take pains to make a thorough restitution in our life do we dig deep.
When we come to Christ, it is good to take time right at the beginning, to sort out all matters relating to our unconverted life that need to be settled. If we are superficial here, and gloss over some matters, we’ll find that our foundation remains weak and our house collapses one day.
What does restitution involve?
It means that if you have cheated the government of taxes etc., you must now repay those taxes. Sometimes it may not be possible to repay the amount to the department concerned. But where there is a will, there will always be a way – if we want to obey God! We can buy Post Office stamps or railway tickets and destroy them, to ensure that the money we owe to the government does indeed go back to it.
If you’ve cheated people, you should also apologise to them while making the repayment. Tell them also how the change came in your life! If you find you don’t have the courage to do this all by yourself, take a brother along with you, while making the restitution.
If you are not able to settle all your debts at once, never mind. Do it in instalments. But make a beginning – even if it be with only five rupees! God accepted Zaccheus the day he decided to pay back his debts – not after he had completed all his repayments!
If you have cheated someone and you don’t know where he is living now, then you should return the money to God – the original Owner of all money. That was the rule that God laid down for the Israelites (Numbers 5:6–8).
We should in any case, never have any money with us that has been obtained unlawfully. God can never bless that sort of money.
If we have hurt or injured someone, in some way that doesn’t involve money, then we should go and apologise to him and ask for his forgiveness.
I know of brothers who have saved money for months and then emptied out their bank accounts in order to make restitution to the government for taxes and customs duties that they had cheated on. And God has blessed them with something better than a large bank account!
I also know of others who have carefully calculated the fares for the times when they travelled without purchasing tickets on buses and trains and who have paid the amounts back. Those who are faithful in the small things are the ones who will do great things for God.
I also know of some who have gone to university authorities with their degree certificates and acknowledged that they had cheated in their final examinations. They were ready to sacrifice their degrees if necessary, in order to have a clear conscience. God has usually given such believers favour in the eyes of the authorities, so that they have been pardoned.
But it may not always work out like that. In your case, God may allow the university to take away your certificate! But then that will be God’s perfect will for you.
I know of one brother who wrote a letter of apology to someone from whom he had stolen a small stamp many years earlier. A theft is a theft, however small the value of the stolen article may be. It is in little matters that our faithfulness is tested.
I am not suggesting that you now torture yourself, trying to rake up from your memory the little wrongs that you’ve done in your past life. No. You don’t have to do that. God will remind you of what needs to be settled; and you need to settle only what God reminds you of.