Matthew 7-I thought I was saved...
All of my life I thought I was saved. I attended Sunday School as a kid, went to church as an adult, publicly confessed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, that Jesus forgave my sins if I repented, asked him for forgiveness of sins in prayer, etc...I even got baptized at thirteen years old, after making a conscientious decision to do so in order to demonstrate to God the sincerity of my beliefs. So, maybe I was saved... But, until I was much older, I had not studied the Bible in depth. Oh, I think I read it twice during middle age, tried to understand it, but skimmed over it to the extent that I don't think I really grasped its messages like I should have. I didn't start to read the Bible on a daily basis, as a devotional, until I was 63 years old, and diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. A diagnosis of colon cancer prompted me to engage in a deep study of the Bible and to apply its messages to what was left of my physical life on earth. I was devoted enough ap...