How to live the Christian life
How we should live as Christians.
Correct Christian living is important, both for us who believe and for those who do not and our principles should not be compromised in any way. On the other hand, we have to be wary of those who want to get us arrested and put in prison because the world has moved away from God (Matthew 10:16-18). This is important to remember as people are trying to trap Christians to get them sacked or arrested (Matthew 7:15-16). Because Christians are often being arrested, I have found that I am looking up more and more laws to find out if some aspect of Christian living is lawful, and it’s usually not. If we are talking in public or preaching the only thing we should be talking about is Jesus and not give opinions of what we think of this person or that group of people. If we are going to be arrested, it should only be because we are teaching about Jesus and not about Woke things, that distract and take people away from the words of Jesus. We should always encourage Christians in their daily life, pray for them and support them in any way we can.
Fellowship
Also we must never give up the habit of meeting together. Hebrews 10:25 and we should meet up all the more as we see the day approaching. This means the days leading up to the time of trouble predicted in Revelation and other places. We need each other more in these days of persecution and trouble to encourage and protect and pray for one another.
How we grow with God
The first thing we need to do is admit where our living is wrong and to change our lifestyle and ask God to forgive anything we have done wrong in his eyes (we are sinners and need to repent). We need to put God first in our lives and to follow the way Jesus lived his life. We should mirror Jesus in what we do, think and say. If we see people in need, we should do our best to help them, though we probably do that through instinct anyway (Matthew 25:31-40). We also need to make time for God in our lives by reading the Bible. God once told me we have 24 hours in a day, if we spend 1 hour with Him, we still have 23 hours to do whatever we want. So I gave God 1 hour of reading the bible every day. I made time for Him and I started to spend more time with Him as I grew in faith and prayer. I now spend a lot more time with God, reading the bible, praying and worshiping Him when I feel the need. As we are told in Mark 12:29-31, we must love God, and those around us and this will show in our actions as mentioned in James 2:1-11.
Putting our trust in God
Putting our trust in God is not easy but giving Him everything in our lives is a start and the more we trust God, the more we grow and know He looks after us (as mentioned in Proverbs 3:5-6). I know from my own experience, when I wanted to leave my job, I was determined to leave but I kept getting messages from God to stay where I was. I eventually accepted it but I said to God, “OK, I will stay and I will give you all my bills and expenses to you and trust you will pay them”. You know what? I didn’t even look at my bills and they were all paid. This really helped me to grow with God and I learned to trust God more with everything. If we trust God, he will be pleased and bless our lives and our faith grows too when we see what God does in our lives. It also shows that we are using but not relying on our abilities to do anything and so we are not rebelling against God.
Praying
Praying is one of the most important ways to talk to God. You don’t grow unless you pray and you can ask God anything you like, and God will always answer your prayers. (You won’t always get what you want unless it is something that God wants as well but other times, God goes above and beyond your prayers. God loves us and wants the best for our lives.) You might just spend a few minutes a day praying but as you grow in faith, you will spend more time in prayer. Sometimes, I think I will only pray for 5 mins and then 20 minutes have passed and the more you have on your mind, the longer the prayer will be. You might just want to start with the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:5-13 or Luke 11:1-4 or a simple prayer. You might want to pray that God will give you wisdom through the Holy Spirit before reading the Bible. These will grow the more you understand God and your prayer life will be meaningful too. We can pray for our friends or family or those we know or work with and should always ask God, who will hear our prayers (Luke 11:5-9).
What we must never do
We should never pray against other Christians (1 Peter 2:1-3). I have been told that some are praying against certain Church denominations or asking God to change other Christians minds or even praying against other Christians they don’t like or agree with. All this does is invite the Devil or Demons to work against other Christians or Churches. God will never listen to such prayers and he does not change people’s minds as it involves free will and He will not do such a thing as that (James 3:15-17.). We should never slander or argue with other believers or people. Matthew 5:10-15 is a great example of what we should be like. If Christians are seriously wrong, we must tell them and if they ignore us, we should do what Jesus told us to do in Matthew 18:15-18 and get other witnesses and if they still ignore what we are saying, then they are ignoring God’s clearly revealed word and we must treat them like those outside of the Church which means don’t hate them (Jesus said to love our neighbour as ourselves and they will still be our neighbour ) – but we can’t have close fellowship with them, in the faith, until they repent. We need unity in the Church but it does not come at the expense of the essential truths of the Christian faith. See my article on unity Unity in the Church.
Praising God
Praising God is an important part of our life with God, whether it is singing, or just saying something that is meaningful. Praise is important to grow and it’s important to remember that praising God is always in the Bible, whether it is Angels, Heavenly bodies or Humans, it is part of what we should always do. When one person asks Jesus into their lives (Luke 5:17), all heaven celebrates as well.
Worship (in the form of praise) is also part of this and is something we all feel compelled to do, usually in Church but we can also do this while driving, or walking and usually involves singing as well as answered prayer praise.
Talking to God every day
We should aways talk to God no matter what is going through our minds or lives. We can share our joy and happiness or other emotions. It’s like chatting to a friend or someone close to you and it’s very important to do this to grow with God.
This is meant to be a two way relationship and as we get closer to God and hear him in more direct ways this will lead us into his presence. We were never meant to be left as orphans. God wants to help us and guide us and that’s why we receive the Holy Spirit on becoming a new believer.
Giving our grievances to God
No matter what we go through, we should always give our problems to God. Whether we see injustice, or something that upsets us, or something wrong, we can give it all to God and even if we are angry, we can let God know as He understands what we are going through. It not only helps our own health, it helps us to grow with God and we are putting our trust in him.
Being Faithful to God
We must remember to remain faithful to God, no matter what is going on in our lives. Remember that nothing can separate us from the Love of God (Romans 8:38-39) and He is always faithful to us (1 Corinthians 1:9-10) as we should be to each other to keep in unity with Christ Jesus.
Remember
If we want to really know how to be a Christian and how we should live and how to treat each other and those who don’t like us, we should read the whole of Romans 12:1-21. Remember that we will have to give an account of all that we do (and our motives and thoughts) and we would rather Jesus says to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant (Matthew 25:23)”.
We represent Jesus on Earth and are his ambassadors and the old expression is “When you travel abroad, you represent your country so be on your best behaviour”, so this is how we should be as Christians. Our lives mirror God and this shows in our lives to those around us. Jesus passed on the baton to us and now we are living our lives like Him to show the next generation that Jesus is alive.