Now That I'm A Christian

I can remember receiving a book following my baptism and because I was "really" devoted at the time of my baptism, I can remember reading the book, "Now That I'm A Christian." If I still have the book anywhere in my possession, I'm sure that there are no notes made in the book and hopefully the pages are stuck together so none can waste their time in the reading. In fact, it has been so many years that I might not even have the name of the book right. One thing I do remember about the book is that it was an instruction manual to the acts of worship and what I needed to do if I was going to please God and be "found faithful."

Since I can't even be sure of the book title, I'm not about to critique it in this blog and instead would offer a few things coming to mind I wrote down in some notes to myself to consider under this topic of now that I'm a Christian.

The first thing I wrote down was to build a relationship. I'm not sure of everything I thought at the time but this relationship I'm thinking of might have many facets. I think you need a relationship with another individual who is also a Christian and someone you can share with as you mature in your Christian walk. I also think you need a relationship with a fellowship of believers. I grew up thinking there was only on "approved" fellowship of believers and it was the Church of Christ. Meet with anyone else behind any other label and you are stepping on the path to condemnation. Currently, I think it important to build a relationship with a fellowship of believers who know God and hold Jesus to be God's son and the one giving himself so our sins could be forgiven. The next relationship and while most might put it first, I am listing it third because I think these others are needed to help build your relationship with God.

I think the relationship with God is founded in my second listing of my notes and I wrote down you should desire to pray. I have to admit (don't have to but will anyway) that I still find my prayer time rather shallow. I attempt to spend the drive to school each morning in prayer and talk to God as if He were sitting right there in the car with me. It is great to realize, however, that he has taken up residence inside me and so I don't have to picture Him there with me since it is a reality. Possibly, my feeling of shallowness might be similar to the concept of sin I got from my minister. He uses the illustration of a net and large fish to describe how we see sin when we are newly aligned with Christ and desire the be Christ-like. We catch the big sin and can easily keep from it but really don't see all the little sins (fish) slipping through the net. As our righteousness gets closer to the righteousness of Christ, our net gets pretty fine and we start seeing how really filthy our lives are because of all the sin we can now see in our maturity. I suspect prayer might be much the same and as we desire and actually pray more, we discover how really weak we are to speak with God.

As I am giving credit to the minister for helping me understand something, I realize and think he would admit how the credit does not belong with him but rather God and I get to my next point. Place credit for what happens in our lives where it belongs! I don't think anything in our lives is accidental and if we have opened ourselves to God, I believe He will orchestrate our lives based upon what He wants to happen and who He wants us to reach. I have no success and last night, when discussing the fullness of Christ we receive immediately from God, we have no chance at failure as members of His family. We are a success already because Jesus was successful. Yes, I used past tense because the whole story has been written.

This in mind, I come to the concluding thought in my notes and think we must allow our joy and realization to be evidenced to others. No, it will not be our work but the joy of God is infectious and instead of isolating ourselves in church buildings each week as we display our joy, we need to be the picture of Christ all day and every day. We need to walk among others, infected as we are, and allow the infection to spread to all we touch in a day.

Do I need to say it? The books like the one I mentioned and the legalistic views we face daily would and have, in the past, boxed the infection of God into a building hidden away from the public needing to "catch a whiff" of godliness. Yes, my fourth suggestion is to allow ourselves to spread the infection.

May I be so bold as to alter the words of Jesus and declare "go forth and INFECT the world!"

Sorry, but another thought entered my mind as I wrote what was supposed to be the LAST sentence in this blog. Infection and disease never seem to take exactly the same path and so our goal should not be to CONTROL the infection, but rather simply spread the infection and allow God to follow whatever path He has chosen for the individual.