I do believe in a higher power
one that loves us one and all
not someone to solve our problems
or to catch me when I fall …
I believe in a loving father
one I never have to fear
that I should live life at its fullest
just as long as I am here

Waylon Jennings wrote those words. They’re from a pretty song called “I Do Believe.” He sang it during an interesting Highwaymen tribute that was on one of the country music channels recently (featuring Johnny Cash singing and laughing- grand!). An old NPR article tells us that Waylon’s song “expresses a hard-earned but complicated faith.”

But there is nothing complicated about it. Lewis called it Christianity and water, a “boys” philosophy which “simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right — leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption.” Sadly, this baseless tune was played at Jennings’ funeral by Kris Kristofferson, who said of it: “[It] is one of the last songs Waylon wrote and is probably my favorite because it is the essence of the man I knew…”

Lewis discusses the abuse of fantasy in this excerpt from a 1956 letter.

For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself…And it is not only the faculty of love which is thus sterilized, forced back on itself, but also the faculty of imagination. The true exercise of imagination in my view, is (a) To help us understand other people, (b) To respond to, and, some of us, to produce art. But is has also a bad use: to provide for us, in shadowy form, a substitute for virtues, successes, distinctions, etc. which ought to be sought outside in the real world–e.g., picturing all I’d do if I were rich instead of earning and saving. Masturbation involves this abuse of imagination in erotic matters (which I think bad in itself) and thereby encourages a similar abuse of it in all spheres. After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is to be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison.

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else . . . It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work . . . All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost if forever. -from “The Problem of Pain”

Excellent review of the 1993 movie’s shortcomings. It is incredibly moving, with a fantastic lead performance, and let’s face it… even bowdlerized Lewis is edifying.

George Sayer from “Jack,” the excellent Lewis biography:

“The figure of Aslan tells us more of how Lewis understood the nature of God than anything else he wrote. It has all the hidden power and majesty and awesomeness which Lewis associated with God, but also all the glory and the tenderness and even the humor which he believed belonged to him, so that children could run up to him and throw their arms around him and kiss him.” No wonder that my little stepdaughter, after she had read all the Narnia stories, cried bitterly, saying, “I don’t want to go on living in this world. I want to live in Narnia– with Aslan.”

Darling, one day you will.

Bend your mind around this one and its implications:

A most astonishing misconception has long dominated the modern mind on the subject of St Paul. It is to this effect: that Jesus preached a kindly and simple religion (found in the Gospels) and that St Paul afterwards corrupted it into a cruel and complicated religion (found in the Epistles). This is really quite untenable. All the most terrifying texts came from the mouth of Our Lord: all the texts on which we can base such warrant as we have for hoping that all men will be saved come from St Paul. If it could be proved that St Paul altered the teaching of his Master in any way, he altered it in exactly the opposite way to that which is popularly supposed. But there is no real evidence for a pre-Pauline doctrine different from St Paul’s. The Epistles are, for the most part, the earliest Christian documents we possess. The Gospels come later. They are not ‘the Gospel’, the statement of the Christian belief. They were written for those who had already been converted, who had already accepted ‘the Gospel’. They leave out many of the ‘complications’ (that is, the theology) because they are intended for readers who have already been instructed in it. In that sense the Epistles are more primitive and more central than the Gospels — though not, of course, than the great events which the Gospels recount. God’s act (the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection) comes first: the earliest theological analysis of it comes in the Epistles: then, when the generation who had known the Lord was dying out, the Gospels were composed to provide for believers a record of the great Act and of some of the Lord’s sayings. -CS Lewis from “Modern Translations of the Bible”

Malcolm Muggeride in conversation with God:

And you… I never caught any glimpse of you in any paradise, unless you were an old shoe-shine man on a windy corner in Chicago one February morning, smiling from ear to ear. Or a little man with lame legs in the immigration department in New York whose smiling patience as he listened to one immigrant after another seemed to reach from there to eternity. Or whoever painted the front of the little church in the woods at Kliasma near Moscow, painted it in blues as bright as the sky and whites that outshone the snow. That might have been you. Or again in Kiev, at an Easter service, when the collectivization famine in the Ukraine was in full swing. . . newspaper correspondents were telling the world of the bursting granaries and apple-cheeked dairy maids there. What a congregation that was, packed in tight, squeezed together like sardines. I, myself, was pressed against a stone pillar and scarcely able to breathe, not that I wanted to particularly. So many gray, hungry faces all luminous, like an El Greco painting and all singing, how they sang, about how there was no help except in you. Nowhere to turn, except to you. Nothing, nothing that could possibly bring any comfort except you. I could have touched you then. You were so near… It was strange in a way that should have found myself nearest to you in the land where for half a century past, the practice of the Christian religion had been most ruthlessly suppressed.”

Satan’s seeming peak, at the Cross, was actually the crippling blow in a downfall that will culminate in him being hurled into the lake of fire (like Sauron’s ring). Again and again in Scripture we see a Lord who enjoys “catch[ing] the wise in their own craftiness” (Job 5:13), frustrating and mocking their evil schemes. “And the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision.” (Psalm 2:3-4)

When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religion of amulets and holy places and priest craft; Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes.

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love–a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me(but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

This is such a lovely poem by Lewis, put perfectly to music by Phil Keaggy many years ago on the Love Broke Through CD (sadly out of print). One interpretation of the poem lies here, although it could as easily be directed at his Creator.

The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. As St. Augustine said, the rapture of the saved soul will “flow over” into the glorified body. In the light of our present specialised and depraved appetites, we cannot imagine this torrens voluptatis, and I warn everyone most seriously not to try. -CS Lewis

Men want fidelity and monogamy, which is why most get married (even Hugh Hefner tried it). They love movies of fidelity and nobility like Braveheart. On the other hand, they also wouldn’t mind having a harem just like Solomon. Men want to play rooster, roaming about the henhouse. This is evident in multitudes of films, beer commercials, and music videos, not to mention pornography. And so men are conflicted: “He wants his home and security / He wants to live like a sailor at sea.”

Solomon had his fill of the harem and found no ultimate happiness in it. He was like a man wanting to drink the sea, gulping mightily and long, only to look up and find the sea as filled as before. So many women, so little time. Indeed, there is something unfulfilling about the “deed” itself, in the same way that some vacations don’t quite measure up to the pictures in the brochure.

There is no more sorrow or pain in heaven, and so the conflict will end. Was the desire created by the fall, with harmony to prevail by its removal? Or is the desire a corrupted version of some holy desire? Jack would likely say the latter (“…If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”) This is not to say that we will walk about heaven having sex with everyone we meet, but perhaps there is something in the fellowship of heaven that will satisfy us in the way that no earthly immorality can. Thinking about it too much seems a waste of time, like trying to ponder infinity. But it will end.

Had I been a journalist there, I should, I am sure, have spent my time hanging about King Herod’s palace, following the comings and goings of Pilate, trying to find out what was afoot in the Sanhedrin; the cameras would’ve been set up in Caesarea, not in Galilee, still less on Golgotha. -Malcolm Muggeridge

In politics, each day brings new tactics and positioning, one party continually seeking the upper hand. The cable shows drone on with repetitive talk and fabricated outrage to fill their time slots. People on message boards anxiously and angrily debate the appointment of a cabinet member, a person who will in 30 years time be as forgotten as someone from the Carter administration’s cabinet. They debate speeches that will be forgotten next week.

This hyper-focus on politics, this idolatry, has certainly increased with the rise of the internet. People blog day and night with a consistency as puzzling as it is tiresome. One transitory topic blows away, like a wisp of paper, and the caravan rolls on to the next one.

For many people, politics seems like an outlet to overcome their boredom and inaction, to connect with something larger than their lives. But what would happen if we gained everything sought from it? Perhaps it would improve our lives, but it wouldn’t bring ultimate joy to us or others. Politics isn’t capable of it (Psalm 146:3-4). There’s no salvation in it. Elections are part of God’s plan, but so are our everyday lives down to the minute details. Something that happened in your home today may be more important in eternity than the sum of what happened today in the halls of Congress, just as the faithful decisions of Abra(ha)m of Ur resound more thoroughly today than those of all the Mesopotamian rulers combined. Perhaps we are indeed missing Golgotha by focusing on Herod.

Lewis from The Problem of Pain:

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us… but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in the world and [pose] an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

Malcolm Muggeridge was one of the greats of the 20th century. His memoir, Chronicles of Wasted Time, is a sharp, hilarious journey through key events of the past century. Two vignettes follow from this beautifully-written book, both from his time in the Soviet Union during the deadly era of Stalinist famine, both illustrating the heavenly, eternal joy that pierces worldly darkness:

It just suddenly seemed to me that Russia was a beautiful place– these pine trees, dark against the snow which had now begun to fall, the sparkling stars so far, far away, the faces of the Russians I met and greeted, these also so beautiful, so clumsy and kind… In the woods there was a little church, of course disused now. The fronts of such churches, like the Greek ones, are painted with bright colours; blues bluer than the bluest sky, whites whiter than the whitest snow. Someone — heaven knows who — had painted up the one in the Kliasma woods. Standing in front of this unknown painter’s handiwork, I blessed his name, feeling that I belonged to the little disused church he had embellished, and that the Kremlin with its scarlet flag and dark towers and golden spires was an alien kingdom. A kingdom of power such as the Devil had in his gift, and offered to Christ, to be declined by him in favour of the kingdom of love. I, too, must decline it, and live in the kingdom of love. This was another moment of perfect clarification, when everything fitted together in sublime symmetry; when I saw clearly the light and the darkness, freedom and servitude, the bright vistas of eternity and the prison bars of time. I went racing back over the snow to K[itty, his wife], breathing in the dry icy air in great gulps of thankfulness.

In Kiev, where I found myself on a Sunday morning, on an impulse I turned into a church where a service was in progress. It was packed tight, but I managed to squeeze myself against a pillar where I could survey the congregation and look up at the altar. Young and old, peasants and townsmen, parents and children, even a few in uniform– it was a variegated assembly. The bearded priests, swinging their incense, intoning their prayers, seemed very remote and far away. Never before or since have I participated in such worship; the sense conveyed of turning to God in great affliction was overpowering. Though I could not, of course, follow the service, I knew… little bits of it; for instance, where the congregation says there is no help for them save from God. What intense feeling they put into those words! In their minds, I knew, as in mine, was a picture of those desolate abandoned villages, of the hunger and the hopelessness, of the cattle trucks being loaded with humans in the dawn light. Where were they to turn for help? Not to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, certainly; nor to the forces of democracy and enlightenment in the West… Every possible human agency found wanting. So, only God remained, and to God they turned with a passion, a dedication, a humility, impossible to convey. They took me with them; I felt closer to God then than I ever had before, or am likely to again.

Will Disney get it right? This site indicates that someone gets it. Perhaps Jack’s famous allegory for children won’t be watered down into Disney’s mind-numbingly shallow formula of the past few decades (It’s noteworthy that even when they were creating their best material in the 1930s, Tolkien expressed his “heartfelt loathing” for “anything from or influenced by the Disney studios.” He thought Disney a vulgar disservice to children.) Perhaps they will even forgo the Aslan action figure.

With Lord of the Rings, a non-allegorical work of “sub-creation,” the challenge was to understand massive historical and linguistical knowledge poured into by its author (not to mention the complex plot). With Narnia, the contextual challenge is something Hollywood really doesn’t understand: Christian theology. Let’s pray that they figure it out. Perhaps it’s most heartening that Walden Media is ultimately responsible for the film.

Theology is the study of God. Theology is important because knowing God is important. CS Lewis had this to say in Mere Christianity:

I remember once when I had been giving a talk…an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, “I’ve no use for all that stuff. But mind you, I’m a religious man too, I know there’s a God, I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night; the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!”

Now in a sense I quite agree with that man. I think he probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he will also be turning from something real to something less real.

…But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only colored paper, but …. it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would only be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, Theology is like that map. Merely learning and thinking about Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experiences of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God, experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused.

And secondly, if you want to get any further, you have to use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion — all about feeling God in nature, and so on — is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music.

C.S. “Jack” Lewis was a 20th-century Oxford and Cambridge professor. Friend of Tolkien, Lewis encouraged him to finish the Lord of the Rings, seeing in it “beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron… a book that will break your heart.” Best known for his fantastic Narnia series, Lewis has inspired even more people with his essays and sermons, so many of which (e.g. “The Weight of Glory,” “Meditation in a Toolshed”) enter the sublime. Outside of Scripture, has any other prose so skillfully married passionate imagery with earthy sense? God’s mighty hand was on this saint. Thanks, Jack, for showing us heaven.

As for me, I am an Ohio-based, two-bit sinner, a Reformed Presbyterian evangelical and Orthodox Presbyterian Church member with no particular credentials but with an abiding interest in God’s glory as revealed in Scripture. This site is dedicated to Clive and all who forsake the thin gruel of this world, the mud pies in the slum, for the endless riches of Christ. Soli Deo Gloria.

Comments are disabled for most posts, but do feel free to contact me via email. From one eternal soul to another, thanks for dropping in.

1. All religions are the same. They just present different ways to get to God.

   Many world religions do have similarities in their moral laws, but morality is a means to an end. It isn’t the end game. Ask more important questions about who God is, how you satisfy God, the purpose of life, or why morality is important in the first place, and Christianity has completely different answers. Saying that Christianity is the same as, say, Islam due to similarities in their morals law is about like saying that a zebra and a skunk are the same species because they share the same colors. Click here for more.

2. Christianity is one way among many ways to God.”

   Jesus begs to differ: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father but by me” (John 14:6). People travel many roads, but according to the Bible the road to heaven is always through Christ. No exceptions. Accept or reject Christianity, but accept or reject it as it is. It’s pointless to pretend otherwise. If you have a beef with Christianity’s claim to be the exclusive path to heaven, then your beef isn’t with Christians, it’s with Jesus. He claimed exclusivity.

3. Jesus was a great teacher, but not God.

   C.S. Lewis of Oxford famously and definitively answers this with his “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic” argument: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” Christ specifically claimed to be God numerous times (e.g. John 8:58: “…before Abraham was, I AM”, John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.”) He accepted worship from others, or when he specifically forgave sins. His hearers knew what he was claiming, which is why they often picked up stones to kill him as a blasphemer. D. James Kennedy distills more about Christ as He is revealed in the Bible: “Christ never withdrew or modified a statement. He never apologized. He never sought advice from anyone. He never asked for prayer for Himself.”

4. You should not judge.

   Christ’s words are often used to say that one person cannot judge the morality of others (e.g. a homosexual). However, if a person judges behavior by the Bible, he is simply restating God’s judgement. Deep down, I think people realize this. A desire to furiously denounce “judgement” indicates a conscience pricked by the specter of an ultimate judge.

5. I’ll take heaven if I can get it, but if not I’ll hang out in Hell with my buddies.

   Think Hell isn’t bad? If what Jesus says is true, Hell is worse than bad. A lot worse. Hell is horrendous, eternal suffering apart from the hand of the person you were created to serve- God. Looking at just one example, the image presented by Christ in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). Hell is symbolically described as unquenchable thirst and eternal regret. Not much in the way of “buddy time” there. Hell is serious business.

6. Hell was a corruption from Paul / the church / monks / etc. Christ is all about peace and love.

   Christ certainly is about peace and love, but he’s also about holiness. Jesus Christ is the major source of the church’s doctrines about Hell. He spoke of Hell more than anyone else in the Bible, calling it a place where “the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”

7. God helps those who help themselves.

   When it comes to salvation, God helps those who cannot help themselves. He helps those who depend on Him for all things. The self-sufficient need not apply. There is a germ of truth in the statement in the sense that God rewards those who are obedient to Him, but even in that case our obedience is that of a helpless patient who does what the Great Physician says in order to get well and stay well.

8. There are a bunch of mysterious “lost books” of the Bible that were obscured by monks in the Middle Ages.

   There are many sub-Biblical books that were rejected for inclusion in the Bible during the early church councils. Most of these were not being used in the churches as authoritative texts anyway. Most were considered helpful, just not inspired. Only a small number of Biblical books were ever seriously debated in the early church before the canon (the current Bible) was settled. In any event, these rejected texts such as the Didache, the epistles of Clement, and Barnabus aren’t “lost.” Ask a church historian.

9. Jesus’s primary message was helping the poor and loving others.

   Jesus’s primary purpose was to glorify his Father (John 17).

10. Who are you to say what’s true?

    I am not the source of truth. Truth is revealed in the Bible. The argument is that Christ, as presented in the Bible, is worth trusting.

11. How can a loving God send people to eternal hell?

    Put simply, the severity of the punishment matches the enormity of the crime! God is loving and holy. For God to be loving (inviting others to enjoy his glory or excellence), he must maintain the integrity of his glory by punishing those who scorn it. God loves his glory with all his power and opposes with all his power those who do not. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but His righteousness demands that every sin receive its just penalty. We do great evil in countless thoughts and deeds every day. Imagine a kindly mother on her child’s graduation day. The mother thinks back to the countless, loving hours spent teaching, correcting, and dealing with all the things mothers do. And finally, the mother is alone with her child that graduation day and says “here we are.” And the response of the child is rear back and slap the mother’s face as hard as possible. “I don’t trust you, hag. Get away from me!” That’s a weak example of the offense we give daily to God, and God is more worthy of trust than every trustworthy person on earth put together. He continually pours His love upon us even though we are unlovable. We breathe His air, eat His food, use His resources, and live the life He has given us. He sent his only Son to die for us unlovable sinners, and He promises us eternal life in His presence, in indescribable glory, if we only believe and trust in Christ. And yet we repay him with unbelief. We don’t live our lives constantly in thanks and gratefulness, ever mindful of his love. We seek things (relationships, money, etc) to find happiness instead of trusting the Source of everything. So do you see? The greater the benefit promised (eternal life and fellowship with God!) and the more revered the maker of the promise, the more outrageous becomes the insult in not believing that promise. To distrust God, to say in effect that what God offers is inferior to our sinful desires, is the greatest possible crime and deserves the greatest possible punishment. The greatest insult that can be paid a person is not to trust that person. c.f. Heb. 10:26-31.

Pascal tells us that happiness “is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.” If a genie gave us three wishes, many of us would choose fame, wealth, relationships, or sex. But ask yourself a question: If you received everything — everything! — you ever wanted, and if all your dreams came true, would you be happy? Or would boredom and anxiety return? Getting old, like a clock winding down, lamenting days gone by. Watching your friends and relatives die as the years pass. Emptiness. And then the end. There’s no getting around it: death is coming!

We want a lot more than worldly pleasures and more than a good family. We were created by God with a “God-shaped hole” in our hearts. Do you want eternal life? Do you want a unending joy and surpassing beauty? Do you want to love purely, without guile, truly finding joy in bringing joy to others? An wars and boredom and pettiness? The Bible says that we can have it one day. More than that, we can have the Author of it all. We can know God and feast at His table. All earthly things are a lame substitute, or as C.S. Lewis said, a shadow of the real and lasting joy of heaven. It is the equivalent of accepting a few pennies on earth because we do not want the endless riches of knowing and enjoying God forever.

If you are reading this, you are alive and it’s not too late to learn what matters infinitely more than anything else: The God who created you is loving and yet also holy; he hates sin and expects perfection. Everything we have and every breath belongs to Him. We owe everything. And yet we are not infinitely thankful or obedient. We are rotten in God’s eyes, deserving of His eternal wrath in Hell.

Enter Jesus Christ. God’s love was so great that He sent Jesus to save those who believe in Him. Adam, our representative, sinned and brought condemnation, while Jesus lived a perfect life and died for sin to bring pardon for those who believe.

What must you do to be saved? Simple: Believe on the Lord Jesus. This faith involves knowledge (right understanding), assent (agreement), and trust (not just believing a chair will hold you up, but sitting on it). J.I. Packer continues:

[W]hat does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? its reply is: it means knowing oneself to be a sinner, and Christ to have died for sinners; abandoning all self-righteousness and self-confidence, and casting oneself wholly upon Him for pardon arid peace; and exchanging one’s natural enmity and rebellion against God for a spirit of grateful submission to the will of Christ through the renewing of one’s heart by the Holy Ghost.

And to the further question still: how am I to go about believing on Christ and repenting, if I have no natural ability to do these things? it answers: look to Christ, speak to Christ, cry to Christ, just as you are; confess your sin, your impenitence, your unbelief, and cast yourself on His mercy; ask Him to give you a new heart, working in you true repentance and firm faith… that you may never henceforth stray from Him. Turn to Him and trust Him as best you can, and pray for grace to turn and trust more thoroughly; use the means of grace [word and sacraments] expectantly, looking to Christ to draw near to you as you seek to draw near to Him; watch, pray, read and hear God’s Word, worship and commune with God’s people… The emphasis in this advice is on the need to call upon Christ directly, as the very first step… [D]o not postpone action till you think you are better, but honestly confess your badness and give yourself up here and now to the Christ who alone can make you better; and wait on Him till His light rises in your soul, as Scripture promises that it shall do.

When you have faith in Jesus, you want to learn more about Him. The fruit of true faith is a desire to align your life with the Bible, not as a way to “earn” anything, but just because it’s the way you want to be. Read the Book of John and see His greatness, His authority, His spiritual beauty. Repent, believe, and have eternal life! As the old musical goes:

The sun is shinin’ come on, get happy
The Lord is waiting to take your hand.
Shout Hallelujah, come on, get happy
We’re goin’ to the promised land.
We’re headin’ cross the river,
Wash your sins away In the tide.
It’s all so peaceful
on the other side…
Sing hallelujah come on, get happy
Get ready for the judgement day.