You’re a Christian…So What?!

{ February 10, 2011 @ 11:08 am } · { Portico }

You a Christian?

Have you been:

• redeemed?
• covered by the marvelous grace of Christ? (see Eph. 1:1-14).
• purchased by the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ applied to you?

Great.  Then we know that your eternity is settled (see verse 13–you are sealed!)

Are you a disciple?

That’s the real question.

First a definition: A disciple starts with the idea that he or she is not capable, left alone, to be and do what God is requiring and calling toward.  God redeems people, puts His Spirit in them to guide them and direct them and to maintain a desire in our hearts to follow Him.  1 John 4 says that we love Him because He first loved us.  He loved you.  Are you now pursuing Him back?  Here are some things to ask yourself:

Are you:

• striving  to know Him through His Word? God has left a record of Himself.  He has revealed Himself.  He has done so in nature (Ps. 19:1, Romans 1:20), but He has gone much farther by giving us a written record of who He is and what He has to say about us. If you are going to grow to be like Him you must know what He says. You must be striving to know Scripture well! Do you know the love of God only through experience? Then how do you answer when tough times come? Only with truth–the revealed word of God!!
• learning to see from His perspective? When Paul begins his prayer in Ephesians 1:15, he is praying for people who have received Christ’s redemption.  He prays for them that they would see clearly with wisdom and understanding–that they would be enlightened in their thinking.  We call this illumination–God’s Spirit living in us (v. 13) and working through us to enlighten us to the truth of God’s scripture as we read it.  Paul is praying that the Ephesians would see things the way God does.  Proverbs 9:10 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  So we can’t look at our lives from the way we want to see them and expect to understand what God is saying.  We must approach our lives from the fact that what God says is truth.  We can then interpret our lives and their circumstances accordingly.

More to come…stay tuned

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