The Bible teaches that the Christian life is one of constant growth. . This are the fundamentals of Christian Life. .. answers on similar questions about work: https ://leondumoulin.nl
Table of contents
- Fundamentals of a Christian life - 4 of 5
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- 5 Habits for the Christian Life
- Getting To Understand The Basics of the Christian Walk
- 10 Guidelines for Christian Living
And when I say to fully surrender your entire life over to God the Father, I mean to fully surrender everything. You can hold absolutely nothing back. If you do not fully surrender everything over to God, then you will handcuff God and prevent Him from working full force in your life. All Christians are obviously saved, but many of them are not fully surrendered to the Lord, and that is why very little happens after they initially get saved.
The second step after a person makes a full surrender to God the Father is that they need to become Spirit-filled. They need to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. You cannot walk this walk without the power of the Holy Spirit operating in your life. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth and to teach you all things. He cannot properly do all of this unless He is released from your spirit to come up into your soul. Once you completely surrender your entire life over to God the Father and receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, the next step is to establish faith and trust in God.
And the beautiful thing about this is that God is only looking for a small amount of faith to get started. The Bible says that faith the size of a mustard seed will move a mountain. Your faith can grow, but God does not expect it to grow overnight. All God asks is that you give Him just a little bit to work with, and He will more than prove Himself to you so that you can learn to completely trust Him to guide you on your new journey. The Bible says we now have to learn how to walk in all the ways of the Lord.
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The Bible is the number one source where you will learn all of the ways of our Lord. I will be listing what these ways are in other articles. These are the rules of the game. If you want to play baseball, the first thing you are going to have to learn are the actual rules of the game.
You cannot step out onto the playing field unless you know exactly what those rules are going to be. If you do not learn what His rules and ways are going to be for you in this life, then the devil and his demons will come in on you for major attacks and try to take you out. God says in the Bible that His people will perish and go into captivity for having lack of knowledge. The Bible says that we have to develop a good, healthy fear of the Lord. This means developing a reverent and healthy respect for God, His ways, and His commandments.
This healthy fear of the Lord will help keep you out of any serious sins that could end up ruining your life. The number one reason I believe God created the human race was for intimate fellowship. God wants to establish a deep, intimate, personal relationship with each person He has created. I believe God actually longs for this.
Again, I will go into much more detail on this in additional articles, as this is a whole subject all in itself. I will give you all of the appropriate Scripture verses to prove this point to you, along with showing you how to enter into this kind of good, deep, personal relationship with the Lord. Along with seeking to develop a good, strong, personal relationship with the Lord, we also need to seek to develop a good, strong, prayer life with Him. In the Prayer Secrets Section of our site, we have many good articles showing you how to develop a good, strong, prayer life with the Lord.
These articles will also give you many different types of prayer strategies you can use with the Lord depending on exactly what you are praying to Him for. God wants to consecrate us and set us apart unto Himself. He wants to transform us by the renewing of our minds. We can give our time, our talent, and our treasure. Jesus called every disciple to make disciples.
Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you…. Or, think about which habit you are weakest in doing, and take steps to develop that habit in your life. Subscribe to our channel for weekly videos and everyday insights. There are five basic habits - spiritual disciplines - that every Christian should know about and practice. Reading the Bible Christians believe that the Bible is inspired by God and authoritative for our lives. Praying The Christian life is more than a religion, it is a relationship with a personal God.
Connecting Connecting with the people around us in a meaningful way is the natural result of connecting with God. Giving The Christian life is not only about what we can get. Mentoring Jesus called every disciple to make disciples. No, God has created things as real. It is sin that makes them illusions. We need to see things as they really are. Modern Humanism teaches that truth is relative.
Each person invents his own truth. This is wrong, dangerous and sinful. We cannot create reality. To say that we can is to say that we are gods, which is what the Father of Lies wants us to believe Gen. Truth is absolute, not of itself, but because it is rooted in God.
God is the final absolute and He does not change. Truth is not contradictory to itself, but to error. Nevertheless, we are finite and do not generally see all the relationships between the things God has said and made. God has revealed some things as paradoxes. For example, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are both revealed truths, but we do not grasp how they are both true. There are also mysteries, or things partly revealed and partly hidden cf. The Trinity is the mystery of mysteries.
We know there is only one God and that He has three persons or aspects. But we cannot fathom the depths of this great mystery. One final thing about truth is important. The deepest theological truths are not the complicated ones, but the basic ones. This is to be truly wise. All believers must be able to give a good answer for their faith and hope I Pet. We call this apologetics, not in the sense of a wimpy apology for something wrong but a virile defence of something right.
Every Christian, not just preachers and theologians, ought to be able to give basic answers to the objections and questions of unbelievers. It is especially useful in evangelism. We need to refute those who oppose us Tit. Apologetics specifically refers to answering the objections thrown at us by those persons and systems which do not claim to be Christian. Polemics aims to refute and expose the various kinds of false Christianity.
Our fight is not only with those outside the Faith, but with those who promote false gospels and heresy of the first order while still claiming to be Christian. One is outright war; the other is sabotage and treason.
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But pseudo-Christianity is more dangerous and sly than outright non-Christianity. We are to be watchmen on the wall Ezek. It is mere human wisdom, which is really foolishness. Philosophy sprang from Greece. In Acts 17, Paul opposed the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. The major Greek philosophers were Plato and Aristotle, and many others. In the modern era, others include Hegel, Marx, Kant, Hume, and many others. Philosophy emphasizes the use of human reason, the mind, rationality. If unchecked, it tends to become atheistic. All Non-Christian Religions are False.
Philosophy is not the only ancient enemy. There are dozens of non-Christian religions, mostly coming from the East. They emphasize the heart, not the mind. They tend to mysticism and pantheism.
Some are closer to the truth than others, but they all lead to Hell. Even post-Biblical Judaism is a false religion, for it does not accept Jesus as the Messiah, denies the Trinity, asserts salvation by works, etc. The three main groups of false Christianity correspond to the three main groups of unbelieving Judaism at the time of Christ.
Roman Catholicism is like the Pharisees — huge, works-salvation, tradition-bound, etc. Eastern Orthodoxy is the same. The second is Liberal Protestantism, similar to the Saducees in their rejection of revelation, weak ethics, etc. Then there are the many cults, like the Jewish cults of the Essenes, Herodians, Zealots, etc, exclusivist and esoteric. The earliest form of pseudo-Christianity was Gnosticism, opposed in Colossians, I John, and elsewhere.
There are many pseudo-Christian cults around today. We may not use force, violence, brainwashing, fleshly temptations, entertainment, or other such means. Honest questions deserve honest answers, as Francis Schaeffer said. Some Weapons Are Useful but Insufficient. Other weapons are acceptable but insufficient. For example, some Christians argue from miracles, fulfilled prophecy, the endurance of the Bible and Christianity through centuries of persecution, the enormous popularity of Christianity, the many favorable words said about Jesus by important non-Christians, personal testimonies, logical proofs, empirical evidences and other such arguments.
These all have their place, but are not our primary resources, for each can be challenged in one way or another by non-Christians. At best, such arguments can only get a stalemate, not a victory. Such is the approach of Christian Rationalism e. The Word of God is our main weapon Eph. Jesus turned to it, not as a last resort, but as His primary weapon in opposing Satan Matt. Our opinions mean nothing. We do not use it as a magical or superstitious talisman, but rather by knowing and believing it and quoting and explaining it properly and appropriately in fielding the objections of unbelievers.
Two key statements in this context: Any team or army will tell you that defence is good, but you also need offence to win. We must know what our opponent is saying, and then we compare it with what the Bible says on that point. Indeed, also challenge the underlying presuppositions of the argument. A presupposition is the underlying and often unconscious assumption of a system of thought. We must know the enemy 2 Cor. It can help to show where such views logically lead.
But mainly we are to show where they contradict what God says. Quote Scripture whether the opponent believes in the Bible or not. It is also important to be as clear in your words as possible. We need not know all the details of a pagan religion or worldly philosophy in order to refute it. Some Christians seem to know more about non-Christian theories than true Christian theology.
Fundamentals of a Christian life - 4 of 5
Leave the detailed study to the experts and theologians. Our job is primarily to know the Bible, for it is sufficient to enable us to believe and defend the truth 2 Tim. He fills the whole universe, but does not show Himself in His full manifestation except in Heaven. To us, He is invisible, inaudible and intangible. But He also reveals Himself. God is so great and far above us, that we would know nothing at all about Him unless He chose to show us Himself — and He has chosen to do just that I Cor.
God has revealed some things about Himself, and left far more concealed. His revelation includes truths about the universe, man, sin, and especially about God Himself. This revelation makes moral and ethical demands on us. Because only part is revealed, His revelation is often a paradox, a mystery, implying there is more to the facts. But it is never a lie or a contradiction.
We may study His revelation, but may not pry into what is not revealed, such as the details of the future Matt. We know only in part, but will know far more when the revelation is full I Cor. God has been revealing Himself by stages and levels. Each one builds on the previous one. This is working up to a climax. God does this in actual history, not in mythological saga or make-believe, as many Neo-orthodox liberals suggest. God also reveals Himself in various ways in different times and to different people. Similarly, when God sets out to save a person, He gradually gives him more light until he is saved, and then gives him progressive illumination and growth in knowledge.
God reveals much about Himself in Nature. All men everywhere have this revelation, and therefore are without excuse. Yet God does not reveal His special grace and salvation through Nature. All men know that God exists, but they do not know Him personally through Nature. God spoke or showed things to select people by dreams when they were asleep and visions when they were awake.
These were not natural dreams like we have, but supernatural dreams. Angels also delivered personal messages to these select people, who as prophets were to pass on the messages to other people. God Revealed Himself through Theophanies. These were more direct than the other means of revelation, but still were not final. There was also some sort of Theophany in Eden.
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God Revealed Himself Verbally in the Bible. The next highest form of revelation occurred when God not only spoke through these other means, but commissioned certain prophets and apostles to write certain words down. This is the Bible, the verbal revelation of God. He gave us actual words. These are the very words of God Himself. Hence, the Bible frequently describes itself as the Word of God, the words of God, and similar terms. It is called the following: Some terms point out that this verbal revelation was written, not just spoken: The fact that God reveals Himself verbally teaches us, among other things, that God is personal and not an abstract principle.
He speaks, therefore is wise. He speaks to us, therefore He cares. Human language is adequate for this level of revelation.
5 Habits for the Christian Life
God condescended to speak human language. It is through the Bible, not Nature, that we learn about salvation. This is how we know God personally. Special Revelation is superior to Natural Revelation, and is the means by which we correctly interpret Natural Revelation. God no longer reveals Himself through dreams, visions, angels, prophets, Theophanies, or the direct voice from Heaven.
Our job is to diligently study this lasting revelation. To know God better, we read, study, understand, believe and obey the Bible. Special Revelation has ceased, but the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit who inspired the Bible continues. We call this Illumination, not Revelation. The light is on, but we need to have our eyes opened. This is how God now reveals Himself best. Jesus Christ is the Greatest Revelation of God. Jesus Himself often said that to see Him was to see God.
To know Jesus is to know God. He is the greatest of all revelations, because Jesus is God Himself. He is God in the flesh John 1: He is the personal, living Word of God. This does not demean the value of the Bible, but fulfills it. Jesus is now in Heaven. We can pray to Him and love Him, even though we do not see or hear Him directly.
We hear Him when we read His Bible. It is not a collection of merely human books I Thess. It is the Word of God already, whether we believe it or not. It is already perfect. In Biblical days, God spoke through prophets, dreams, visions and angels. But that has ceased. The Bible continues as the only Word of God. Similarly, preaching is not the Word of God. Preaching should be based on the Bible, but is not the same as the Bible. Also, the Bible is qualitatively different from every other book ever written.
It alone is the Word of God. Even the books of the Apocrypha contain only human wisdom. The Bible is the Written Word of God. God was pleased to commit His Word to writing. It was inscripturated, or written down in human script. The finger of God directly wrote the 10 Commandments Ex. God used the human authors of Scripture as His fingers to write the Bible.
God did this so that we would have His Word in black and white, in a permanent form to read and study and consult. We need not depend on a series of priests who passed it on down the ages by word of mouth to be contaminated by fallible human memory. We have it in writing. God did not breath something into the Bible; God breathed the Bible out of His own mouth. Jesus referred to this in Matt. God sent forth the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God John 3.
He moved certain prophets and apostles so that they then put down in writing the exact words God wanted them to write. Technically, it is the Bible, not the writers, which is inspired. Also, it is inspired because of its source, not its effect. It is divinely inspired regardless of whatever effect it has on us. All of the Bible is Inspired by God. Rather, the text says that all of the Scripture is inspired. This means that all parts are equally inspired.
Ruth is as inspired as Romans, Joel as much as John. Therefore, it all carries divine authority and we should read all of it. All parts of it are profitable to our spiritual well-being. The Very Words of the Bible are Inspired. God breathed out specific words, not just vague ideas or feelings which the human authors were left to interpret and write down.
The Bible is verbally inspired. God inspired the words of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. This does not refer to any translation into English or any other language. Still, the authority of the original language carries over to accurate translations. God Controlled the Writers of the B i ble. They did not simply sit down and decide to write the Bible.
God chose who would do the writing, then He worked miraculously in them so that He controlled what they wrote. It was not left to the fallibility of humans. Some parts of the Bible were directly dictated by an audible voice e. In most cases, God moved in a deep and mysterious way on their hearts and minds in other ways, such as by dreams and visions. They certainly knew that the words they wrote were not merely their own I Cor. God gave them the very words, not an-inner illumination of wisdom. Also, this special inspiration has ceased.
What we need now is illumination to understand what has been inspired. The light is on; we need to have our eyes opened. Because of sin, the natural Man is incapable of understanding the true meaning of the Bible 1 Cor. God Proves that the Bible is the Word of God. Scripture carries with it certain marks of divine authorship. Among them are its high spirituality and morality, its enormous popularity in history, its durability against persecution, its record of fulfilled prophecy, etc.
But these alone are insufficient to prove divine inspiration. The Spirit is the witness because the Spirit is the truth I John 5: Even unbelievers are impacted by this power cf. Like the men with Paul on the Damascus road, they hear the sound but do not know the voice. The Word of God carries with it the very power of God. It is compared to a hammer that breaks rocks, light that overcomes darkness, fire that cannot be extinguished, etc.
Getting To Understand The Basics of the Christian Walk
Just as God created all things by the power of His Word, so He changes lives today by that same power. God spoke to the prophets and through the prophets. He still speaks today through His Word. Let us listen and be transformed by this powerful book, the Holy Bible. The Bible is true. Some other books may be true, in that their contents are correct; but only the Bible is truth itself.
It is the only reliable guide to ultimate truth. Being holy, it is free of all impurity of error. The Bible is inerrant; it contains no errors. Truth and error are incompatible, like light and darkness. It is also infallible; it cannot fail to speak the truth. It does not and cannot err. Thus, Scripture has no contradictions between its parts, such as the four Gospels They are complementary, not contradictory. The Bible also contains no myths Scripture itself warns against myths I Tim. Parables are not myths. It contains deep mysteries and paradoxes, but no errors.
Nor does the Bible contain any forgeries or frauds cf. The Bible is completely true, in whole and in part, in all details as well as in the general content. It is true whenever it speaks of things we could otherwise study or observe, such as history and science. It is true in all areas, not just the spiritual, religious and theological. If we do not believe God in the areas we could verify, how could we believe Him in the areas that we cannot verify? Man can err; God cannot. But it is not true that to be human one must necessarily err. Adam did not err before the Fall, nor did Christ ever err, and they were fully human.
The divine side of Scripture guarantees purity from error in the human side, just as the divine nature of Christ protected the purity of His human side. Yes, the Bible uses round numbers, hyperbole, figures of speech, symbols, and phenomenological language. But these are usual for human language and are not errors.
God is truth and cannot lie Tit. What Scripture says, God says. This is not to deify the Bible, as we are falsely accused of teaching.
Rather, it is but to recognize what God says about His Word. To believe the Bible is to believe God. To believe God is to agree that God is and speaks truth John 3: But let God be true and every man a liar Rom. To judge it is to condemn oneself. God tells us to test all things I Thess. By the Word of God, as the noble Bereans did in Acts Anything that contradicts the Bible is automatically wrong Isa.
We err if we do not know the Bible or if we contradict it Matt. God curses those who preach false gospels contrary to the one true Gospel Gal. Sola Scriptura — Scripture alone is our final authority in all areas, such as faith and practice. It carries with it the very authority of God Almighty Himself. They appealed to their tradition; Jesus rebuked them by appealing to Scripture. Church tradition must be subject to the Bible, otherwise it nullifies Scripture. Roman Catholicism repeats the same error as the Pharisees with their tradition.
They say that the Church gave us the Bible, therefore the Church is in authority. But this is wrong. That includes all creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms and church constitutions. Men can and do err, but God cannot err. The Bible is therefore over the authority even the delegated authority of people who exercise some degree of influence and authority. While Scripture tells us to obey parents, preachers and politicians, we must obey God and not them if they ever go against the Bible Acts 5: The words and books of theologians must be weighed by Scripture, as well as all sermons and Sunday School lessons.
Any preacher, priest, pope or rabbi who sets himself up as an equal authority to God is automatically a false prophet, for the true prophets themselves were under the authority of the Word of God. Thus, all philosophy, psychology, logic, reason, science and opinion are subject to the truth and authority of the Bible. Because of common grace, Man may learn and teach some truths. But if they contradict Scripture — whether implicitly or explicitly, whether in doctrine or in method — then they thereby condemn themselves as false.
This applies to our own thoughts as well. Even Adam before the Fall was subject to the spoken Word of God. He fell into sin when he rebelled against that authority. We dare not trust our fallen minds, which are prone to err. The Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit. He never contradicts Himself, for that would be contrary to His nature as the Spirit of Truth.
Some groups need to remember this in their zeal for the work of the Spirit. All spiritual feelings, impressions and intuitions must be subject to the Word. We dare not invent exceptions because we feel that the Spirit is leading us — otherwise we are no different from the fanatic who murders his neighbor with an axe because he said that God told him to.
The Holy Spirit never contradicts what He says in the Bible. The Bible alone is our source of all spiritual authority.
10 Guidelines for Christian Living
We must trust in God and His Word, even when we do not understand it. We must not lean on our own understanding or inclinations Pro. We ought to read it, study it, believe it and obey it. Our attitude to the Bible is to be the same as our attitude to God, for it is His Word. This means we are to love it, even as we love God. Love God, love His Word. We Should Study the Bible. God gave us the Bible to read and study.
It is a textbook to study, not a picture-book to browse through. There is a big difference between simply reading a book and seriously studying it. One is leisure, the other is work. God wants us to study our Bibles, not use them for pressing flowers. To study the Bible is to research it to discover its meaning. Eisegesis is twisting the Scriptures to suit our preconceived notions 2 Pet. When we study the Bible, we should set aside wrong presuppositions and preconceived ideas.
We need to be teachable. We should pray before and during Bible study, and rely on the Holy Spirit in us to teach us what He says in the Bible. Faith comes to us by the Word of God Rom. Without faith, we can understand the Bible only in a natural way, not a supernatural way. Studying the Bible profits us nothing unless it is mixed with faith Heb. Search and you will find. Dig deep and you will find new treasures of gold hidden in this field. Alas, some Christians have not even read the entire Bible yet.
Others try to read it through every year. It takes work, but the Holy Spirit enables us to understand cf. A lacksadaisical attitude betrays low respect for the Bible and little faith in God. But serious Bible study is work which brings rest. Though the Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, it is still understandable through reliable translations not to mention the scholarly study of the original languages.
We may profit from preachers and teachers who explain the Bible to us Acts 8: The Bible is for everyone. Though some parts are harder to understand than others 2 Pet. Even a cursory study of the Bible will yield great results. We study the historical setting of Scripture human author, original readers, date, geography, manners and customs, archeology, etc , as well as the normal meaning of the language its lexical meaning, grammar, syntax, context, etc.
We should study all of it, not just our favorite parts. Use a concordance and cross references to compare Scripture with Scripture. It has great variety. All Scripture is inspired and deserves our study. Just as God used many human authors, so he used their backgrounds and a variety of literary styles. In these, we find prayer and praise to God, and wisdom in dealing with life. Then other books are mainly laws Exodus-Deuteronomy, parts of others. Some laws are straight-forward commands or prohibitions, while others are case laws.
Then other books are mainly prophecy, recording direct messages from God, including accurate predictions of the future. Lastly, there are the epistles of Paul and others. All these styles form a wonderful harmony. One important principle of Bible study is knowing and noticing that Christ is the center of Scripture. The Old Testament is filled with prophecies, types and symbols of the coming Messiah Gen. Jesus fulfilled these prophecies. Some are explained in the New Testament see Luke And sandwiched between the Old Testament predictions of the future and the New Testament explanations of the past, we find the four Gospels which describe the person and work of Christ in a special way.
Since it is a book about Christ, the Bible is therefore a book about how we may be saved from our sins through Him. It makes us wise unto salvation 2 Tim. Some parts of the Bible more directly discuss salvation, such as the four Gospels, Acts and Romans. But all parts of Scripture fit into this comprehensive entity. Thus, the Bible was given to us that we may know how to be saved and how to have the assurance of salvation John We can also use it to tell other people the Gospel of salvation.
The Bible is frequently compared to food. We ought to thirst for it like a baby thirsts for milk I Pet. The basic message of the Bible is like milk; the additional details are like meat Heb. The Bible is the means that God uses to nourish His children. It gave us the new birth and sustains our new life. We grow spiritually anemic when we ignore it. So, we need to regularly read and study it, and meditate on it like a cow chews the cud. The more we do, the stronger we will grow spiritually.
We study the Bible to learn about God. When we study it, we always need to find what God wants us to do in light of that passage. It teaches us how to live for God and helps us resist Satan and temptation, worship God in the way acceptable to Him, and witness in the world. It encourages us through its many promises, aids us in prayer, points out our sins and assures us of forgiveness, strengthens our faith, answers the basic questions we have for guidance, and so much more.
So let us diligently read it, study it, believe it and obey it cf.