Your Spiritual Journey
Being a Christian
Being a Christian
I recently turned 50 years old. Yes, I am officially over the hump! As I was looking back on parts of my life, I thought back to when I was baptized and realized that I’ve been a Christian for over 75% of my life. That is a pretty good portion of my life already dedicated to living a Christian life, and I hope I have a lot more life to dedicate to serving God.
One of the observations I thought of during this reflection is that becoming a Christian is very clearly documented in the plan of salvation. We must hear the word of God including the Gospels, believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died for our sins (Mark 16:16), repent for our past sins (Acts 17:30, Luke 13:3,5), confess that belief to others (Matthew 10:32, 33), be baptized into Christ (Acts 2:38) and live your life serving the Lord (I Corinthians 15:58). Those first five steps are pretty easy to follow, but the last part is a little less clear and can be harder to define.
I Corinthians 15:58 says, in part, to “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord…”. That part, while important, is a little more vague than the concrete, measurable steps of hear, believe, repent, confess and be baptized. One can measure when each of those steps have been completed. However, the last part is an on-going act that occurs the rest of your life. It is never finished until God calls us home.
There are so many aspects of “living for Christ” including how we treat others inside and outside of the church family, the actions we take in our daily lives, growing our prayer life to maintain our connection to God, and continuing to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God. We can never fully know God until we meet Him in heaven. We cannot pray too much. We cannot be too genuinely good and nice to other people. No matter what we do, it will never be enough to match what Jesus did for us. The good news is that we don’t have to live up to Jesus’ example since he already cleared the path, paved the road and installed streetlights for us. Just keep working on your relationship with Jesus and know that even when you have an off day, you have another opportunity to work on it tomorrow.
James Passmore
