Website owner:  James Miller

You would be a Christian? What must you do?


   Do you wish to become a Christian?  To become a Christian is to 
   become a disciple of Jesus Christ, a follower of his teachings.  
   And the message he preached was, "Repent of sin and turn to 
   God."  To become a Christian you must decide to turn away from 
   the Way of Sin, the Way of the World, and go God's way.  You 
   must forsake sin.  You must give it up, stop doing it, renounce 
   it.  You must change yourself.  How do you go about doing this?

   First, you make a commitment to God to go his way.  Then you 
   start thinking about yourself, your failings, the ways in which 
   you need to change.  And then you figure out how you are going 
   to try to change, reflect over plan and strategy, and then 
   start working on it. 

   In more detail, what should you do?

   Make as your objective in life Wisdom, Understanding, and 
   Truth.  Pursue these.  Ask God to give you these things.

   Read the gospels.  Note what Christ taught about forgiveness, 
   humility, love of God, love of fellow man, etc.  Read the 
   epistles.  Note what they say about the kind of person a 
   Christian is supposed to be. 

   Make a list of the virtues:  honesty, integrity, chastity, 
   kindness toward others, self-denial, patience, humility, 
   justness, etc.   Now make a list of the sins:  dishonesty, 
   selfishness, malice, hatred, immorality, unchastity, 
   impatience, pride, envy, covetousness, anger, strife, 
   lasciviousness, etc. 

   Your objective is now defined.  The virtues tell you what kind 
   of person you want to be.  The sins tell you what kind of 
   person you don't want to be.  All together they describe a 
   particular kind of person.  That is the kind of person you are 
   aiming at.  That is the kind of person God wants you to be.  If 
   you really love him, that is the kind of person you will want 
   to be. 

   You want to change yourself at a basic level.  You want to make 
   God's values and outlooks your values and outlooks and his 
   dislikes your dislikes.  His values are the virtues.  His 
   dislikes are the sins.  You would like to carry his attitudes 
   and outlooks on things.  You would like to love the things he 
   loves and hate the things he hates.  Reflect on the rightness 
   of the virtues and the badness of the sins.  Commit yourself to 
   his values and outlooks.

   Have faith in God and follow His orders.  A thing is right 
   because God has said it is right.  Honesty is right because God 
   has said it is right, chastity is right because he has said it 
   is right, lying is wrong because God has said it is wrong,  
   immorality is wrong because he has said it is wrong, etc.  You 
   need no better reason than this.  God, the Creator, has said it 
   is so, so it is so.  Comply with His orders on conduct and 
   behavior for no better reason than that these are His orders.  
   Obey his orders on little things and you will develop habits 
   that will carry over to big things. 

   Note the various sins in your life specifically and 
   individually and renounce them within yourself.  Try to figure 
   out strategies for getting rid of them. 

   Learn to live by principle.  Be honest by principle.  Make it a 
   point to always tell the truth.  Make strict honesty a habit.  
   Make kindness towards others a habit.  Make chastity a habit.  
   Make it a habit to never act maliciously towards another 
   person.  Make humility and modesty a habit.  Etc., etc.  Make 
   rules for yourself that you expect to follow.  Then watch your 
   behavior.  Correct it.  Change it.  When you stumble get up and 
   keep going.  Watch for traps.  Avoid temptations.  Avoid 
   situations that lead to temptation.

   Ask God for help in trying to become the kind of person he 
   would have you be. 

   Out of his love for God and the things that God stands for the 
   person who would be a Christian must renounce sin, badness and 
   the ways of the world.  He must determine within himself to 
   pursue God's way, the way of Goodness and Virtue.  He must 
   strive within himself to follow the way of honesty, integrity, 
   chastity, kindness toward others, self-denial, patience, 
   humility, justness, etc.  He must renounce dishonesty, 
   selfishness, malice, hatred, immorality, unchastity, 
   impatience, pride, etc.  He must sort things out, straighten 
   himself out, and conduct himself in the way God would have him 
   conduct himself.

   The Christian must have within himself an inner desire and 
   determination to obey God and follow in His way.  And this 
   comes out of his love of God, his allegiance to God.

   The Christian has personal standards that he expects himself to 
   live up to.  His lifestyle is not the lifestyle of the world.  
   He has chosen an outlook and lifestyle that is radically 
   different from that of the world that he lives in.  His 
   standards are God's standards.  His values and outlooks are 
   God's values and outlooks.  What the world thinks of him 
   doesn't matter to him.  Only what God thinks is important to 
   him.


   Dec 2003





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