Acts 16:30-31 And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

She said, “All I have to do is believe.”

I said, “No.”

She said, “All I have to do is believe Jesus Christ is Lord.”

I said, “No.”

She said, “All I have to do is believe that Jesus died for my sins.”

I said, “No.”

My conversation is with one who goes to church regularly, attends bible studies weekly, and prays often. Somehow she has boiled down the essentials of salvation into simply believing. What value is there in hanging on to the misunderstanding of one verse and ignoring the whole sequence of events that leads up to that one moment that changes you forever? Nothing, there is no value in simply believing, if you do not understand what is being asked of you.

I have had many conversations over the years that have gone exactly this way. Perhaps they have been saved but in the process they have failed to clarify the sequence of events in a way to verbalize the process. Yes, there is a process, a sequence of events, recognition, acceptance, and choice. Somewhere along the way most people blithely forget the fundamentals. How can you explain this to the lost if you blindly say, “All you have to do is believe!”

Here I am again, explaining with greater detail, from beginning to end, the process of salvation. You might recognize the process but never verbalized it with enough detail to make in understandable to the lost. That is the point for understanding, is it not? The lost need to know the process in order to make an informed decision.

What does it mean to be lost?