Kingdom 4 Africa.com

Archive for the ‘New Christians’ Category

I recently (August 2008) gave my life to Christ and I have found that God really helps in this life through the work of the Holy Spirit. The problem with a lot of Christians is that they believe in God but they don’t believe that God will actually come to them on earth and answer their prayers. I have been there so I know, but if one analyses it, it is stupid in the simplest form. If one believes in God, then one believes God created the universe from the massive stars to the tiniest atom – all of it. If He can do that, why can He not answer prayers?

 I feel that one of the reasons God wants me to set up and develop this website is so that He can communicate the practicalities of being a new Christian through me. I was fortunate to have been led to Christ by a friend who has a great knowledge of the Bible. Therefore my experiences as a new Christian have been contextualised a whole lot more than somebody who does not have access to immediate guidance and knowledge.

 Honestly verbalizing the Sinners Prayer, truly repenting and accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour is the first step to becoming a citizen of the Kingdom of God. At this stage (if you have honestly done step one and completely submitted to the Lord) you should feel an immense sense of peace, relief, joy – all the good emotions and feelings you can think of. I can’t explain it, but you can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. I just can’t explain it. Invincibility is too human but it is something like that. This intense awesomeness stayed with me for a few days. For the first couple of months it came back to me regularly when I was praying or reading the Bible or meditating on the Word. All I wanted to do was read Scripture, pray and talk about God. Then after awhile I didn’t feel Him for weeks. I prayed, I asked my friend who led me to Christ why I couldn’t feel the Holy Spirit, I researched on the internet and eventually I found the problem. I am sure it was in one of Oswald Chambers daily devotionals from his book “My Utmost for His Highest” (I very highly recommend you buy the book or Google it and use it online) where I found out what was happening. I had gotten over confident in Christ and was not praying everyday or reading the Bible everyday i.e. I was drifting away from Jesus. So, as any friend would do who is being ignored, He removed His presence from me. He will, however, never turn His back on you. Please remember that! It is as simple as that!! Jesus wants a relationship with you, not man made religious activity. As in all relationships, it requires effort – regular Bible readings, cell group meetings, fellowship at Church, prayer and meditation on the Word. Try to do everything you do in honour of God. Talk to Him all day. Ask Him questions, tell Him things. Just stay in contact with Him all the time and He will be there for you all the time. It is much easier said than done and I am by no means a model citizen, but part of being a Citizen of the Kingdom of God is discipline in all things.

 The other two things I learnt during this “drought period” are about obedience and testing of one’s faith.

Uncompromising obedience to God is perhaps the most important act a Christian can do because it encompasses everything God requires of you. As you grow in faith (by the way, faith is a gift from God and grows as your relationship with Him strengthens) you can start to hear the Holy Spirit. My experiences are that He speaks to you in many ways. One example, which is where this website came from, is He sent me a thought out of the blue and as clear as day that was so unexpected that it could only have come from God. Other examples are when I have been praying about a solution to some problem, the next day a friend will walk into my office and start talking about exactly that topic with a solution. Sometimes I read the answer in Scripture. The point, however, is that when the Holy Spirit talks to you, you must learn to obey Him. More often than not, He is pointing you down a path He wants you to take. I cannot overemphasize obedience enough. Yes, it is not easy, but through prayer and discipline it gets easier and easier. 

1. The second point is that God will keep testing our faith. There are two reasons for this.
   1. The first is that taking His obvious presence away from us, we get into a situation where we could doubt our faith. It causes us to step up a gear and refocus our worship and time spent with Him. Also, part of the journey with God is about training and preparation. As with everything we do that is worth anything, we train vigorously and prepare actively. While on earth, we will never become as pure as Jesus Christ but we must continue to strive for that perfection everyday of our lives and this is the training and preparation I am talking about. I have read that this preparation is not just for this life but also the eternal life. I am too inexperienced to know if that is correct, but it makes sense to me.
   2. The second reason God tests us is that we get complacent if everything keeps going our way. Complacency is never good, particularly in the case of our relationship with God. We must never feel a sense of accomplishment with God because there is always another level to get to. Its part of our journey.

Eventually, and this is what you should strive for, you will be so “one with God” that you will not notice that the Holy Spirit is there because He is always there.  From what I have seen and studied, the process works as follows:

A person gets saved and then repents. The proper meaning of repent is to turn 180 degrees and turn your back on all your old, bad habits and start doing new things that fit with being a Christian. I.e. a new person is born, born again in Jesus Christ. This repentance is the first place that people fail (including myself), but if you get back up, ask for forgiveness and truly try to stop doing whatever it was, then God wipes the slate clean again and again and again. He never turns His back on you even though there will be days when it feels like it!!

The next real step, and the main difference between TRUE Christianity and all other religions, is to develop a personal relationship with God.

You will be surprised at how many “saved” Christians don’t even make it to this step, but this is the key. If you think about it, if your friend stops phoning you and making an effort with you, you start to do the same. It’s the same with God. Once you are saved, He will never turn his back to you but He will take His protection and blessings away from you if you don’t make an effort to grow your relationship with Him. To grow that relationship requires very regular Bible reading and study, regular prayer, both in private (ie spending time praising God and listening to Him) and throughout the day (continually talking to Him and honouring Him with everything you do), fellowship like cell groups, going to Church etc. We all go to Church, most of us go to cell groups, but how many get up early every day to have a devotional time with God? The latter, I found, is the absolute key to growing a relationship with Him.

The other problem I have seen is that a lot of Christians are saved and born again, but don’t fully grasp what God can and will do for them. Believe it or not, but this is a two-way relationship!!! If you believe in God, then you know that He created the universe and earth for us. He created each one of us individually, much like you create something with your hands. Our purpose on earth is not to make a million bucks or save a million souls (because only God can save a person) or whatever. Our primary purpose on earth is to honour God and through doing that and growing our relationship with Him, He will unlock the path that each one of us needs to take which will reveal our secondary purposes. (I highly recommend  the book by Rick Warren entitled “The Purpose Driven Life” which explains properly what we are on earth for).

When we are on God’s path, He will pour out His blessings on us because we will be doing what He planned for us to do before we were born. He has a plan for all of us, but only a tiny handful of us ever carry that plan out because so few of us have developed a relationship that close with God. Oswald Chambers summed it up beautifully by saying that we should “do what God blesses and not what we want God to bless”. This is extremely powerful because it means we submit to the will of God. By doing what He wants us to do, He will pour out His blessings on us. You have been given natural talents that you enjoy using to fulfil the blessings of God.

A lot of us are frightened about this “path” because we think it may not lead to the millions we planned to earn, because it means complete submission to God and complete trust in Him that He will guide us and bless us. This is a complete opposite to worldly wisdom where riches and independence are preached. It is also a key to the success in our relationship with God. We cannot worship two masters which means we must put our dreams before God, pray about them and give up the ones He rejects. Follow only those which God approves and abundance (not necessarily material abundance) will follow you.

It requires faith to follow the path and new Christians are rarely faithful enough to get straight onto the path. We cannot grow our faith. It is a gift from God and only grows when we grow our relationship with God, so its all a bit of a “catch 22″. If you want the blessings of God while still on earth, grow your relationship with Him and OBEY Him.

Developing a relationship with God is very easy, but it requires effort, as does everything worthwhile. In the beginning, it requires effort to get up half an hour or an hour earlier to spend time with God, but as the relationship grows with Him, you actually really start to look forward to it. You start to do everything you can to ensure that you get to each cell meeting, each Church service etc. You get a feeling inside you that you just want to spend time doing God’s stuff.  

There is so much more experience I have to write and as God leads me, I will add articles to the website, but in closing, I would like to leave you with a Scripture from 1 Corinthians 13:13 “Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love”. This has proved to be the greatest practical verse for me and the reason is this. As your love for God grows, you will start to realise what scale the spiritual warfare is that is going on around us between good and evil. Satan and his cohorts are extremely subtle and can disguise themselves as princes of light, but if you apply the concept of love to everything you are unsure about, satan and his darkness will fail every single time. Only that which is from God can withstand the scrutiny or pure love.

An example here is the current rash of “pastors” who provide a “pay for prayer” service. If we apply the concept of love to this, why would a pastor ask for money to pray for you? Did you also feel the sense of disgust when you read that? Surely he should do it from the kindness of his heart and through this act of kindness, request the Holy Spirit to intervene for you?

By the way, if you read Matthew 10:8, its says that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are free and therefore if you are able to use these gifts you must give them for free.

Praise God for He is so AWESOME!