Once a person is saved, we know that they are saved forever. The Bible says in John chapter 10, verse 28:
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
What a blessing it is to know that we can never lose our salvation! But now that you are saved, what is God's plan for your life? The Bible teaches that, in addition to being saved, we can also become disciples of Jesus Christ. Being a disciple of Christ is a wonderful thing, often challenging, but the rewards will be great. If you decide to follow Christ in your life, you will not regret it. So what steps are involved in becoming a disciple?
A church is an orderly assembly of believers under the authority of an overseer (Latin: bishop), also called the pastor of that church.
Now, in order for a church to be good or even just legitimate, it has to meet certain criteria.
First, a church has to be right on salvation, meaning that it teaches
that salvation is only by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and that you can't lose your salvation.
If a church, for example, teaches that someone has to repent of their sins or do sacraments or try living a good life in to be saved, then
these people are not saved and that is not a legitimate church. These people have not understood that salvation is a gift and not something you work for.
Also, if someone teaches that a believer can somehow lose their salvation, then that person is consequently denying that a believer already has everlasting life.
Such a person, although they might claim to, does not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, because they do not believe the record that God gave of his Son, according to 1 John 5:10-12.
A great sermon on this can be found here.
The pastor of a church, next to being saved, also has to meet other qualifications.
For example, the Bible teaches, that he has to be married to one wife and has to have children.
All this can be found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
A church also has to use the right Bible, for English speakers, that is the King James Version Bible.
The Bible is the foundation of our faith and our final authority on truth.
If we had a false and corrupted Bible, then we would consequently learn a bunch of lies.
Lastly, it’s important that the church being visited has some sort of soulwinning program where they are trying to preach the gospel to the lost.
If the church does not have a soulwinning program yet, maybe one can ask the pastor, and he is open to initiating one.
Baptism is derived from the Greek word βαπτίζω (baptizo), meaning 'to immerse' or 'to submerge'. It is the act of a believer being fully immersed in water, symbolizing the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It signifies the believer's identification with Christ's sacrifice and their commitment to walk in newness of life. This is also why baptism happens after a person believes (Acts 8:36 - 37). If someone got sprinkled as an infant or baptized before they got saved, then that person still has to get properly baptized after they got saved. Although this may sound strange to some, Acts 19:1-5 provides a clear example of this situation. In that passage, people had been "baptized", but their baptism was not valid, so they needed to get baptized again in the proper manner.
Originally the Bible was received in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and most of us do not speak these 3 languages. We therefore use translations of the Bible into a language that we can understand. This is 100% valid. In the Bible itself, parts of the Hebrew Old Testament are translated and quoted in the Greek New Testament, showing us that God's Word is not limited to the language it was originally received in. Sadly, the fact that we use Bible translations also has opened the door for false and corrupt Bible translations. These "Bibles" falsely so called, often completely change the meaning of texts, they even remove entire text segments or add to them. If someone is an English speaker, they should get a King James Version of the Bible. It is the Word of God perfectly translated into the English language without any translation error. One might learn more about this here. Also, one should make sure to get a King James Version Bible specifically without any comments, study notes etc. What one should read is the pure Word of God.
If one has acquired the right Bible, a personal recommendation is the following: Read through the Gospel of John first. Then afterward read the entire Bible from beginning to end. By reading four chapters of the Bible per day, a person can finish the entire Bible in less than a year. If there arise any questions, one should not despair and keep on reading. Many questions will resolve themselves with time and more Bible reading.
Soulwinning (derived from Proverbs 11:30) is the act of a saved person getting another person to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore winning that person to the Lord.
Now we know that salvation comes by believing, but what makes a person believe?
According to Romans 10, believing is the result of hearing someone else preach the Word of God and accepting it.
Therefore, our job as soulwinners is to preach the way of salvation from the Word of God to an unsaved person, giving them the chance to get saved.
Now an example on what soulwinning may look like can be seen here and a good explanation of how to effectively go soulwinning can be found here