Website owner:  James Miller

  ON BECOMING A NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST                6/98

   There is a false idea in connection with becoming a born-again 
   Christian.  It is the idea that when you give your heart to 
   Christ, accept him as your personal Savior, etc. you will then 
   miraculously become a new creature in Christ.  God does 
   everything you are told.  You don't do anything.  That is a 
   falsehood and a deception.  It is not true.  The truth is you 
   must effect the change yourself (with, probably, a lot of help 
   from God).  You must depart from your sins, give them up, turn 
   away from them.  You must leave your old ways and follow new 
   ways.  You can ask God for help but you must do it.  When you 
   give your heart to Christ, in one way, you are instantly 
   transformed.  You have just done an about-face in your life.  
   You have just made the most important decision of your life.  
   You are going in a different direction now, the right 
   direction, and you know it.  There is a happiness, peace and 
   exuberance from the decision that you have just made.  There is 
   a new spirit within you from that moment.  You are God's child 
   and servant now.  You are going God's way now. 

   When you give your heart to Christ what you really do is to 
   make a covenant with God (make an agreement with him) that you 
   will follow in his ways, in both letter and spirit, and, in 
   return, he will save you through the blood of his son, Jesus.  
   Once you make this agreement you are bound to keep up your side 
   by living a life of honesty, integrity, honor, morality, 
   chastity, justness, humility, goodness, virtue, etc. (i.e. live 
   in conformity with his commandments and principles).  You are 
   now his servant, his representative on this earth.  He knows 
   all that you do and the thoughts of your heart.  You cannot 
   deceive God.  To walk in his way requires courage and character 
   in this bad, Satan-ruled world.  It is a hard path but you 
   always have him to turn to and to help you.  He is your ever-
   present companion. 

   What happened to me after I gave my heart to Christ?  I 
   immediately started enthusiastically thinking about what steps 
   and actions I was going to take in implementing my decision.  I 
   started asking myself what things I ought to do and ought not 
   to do as a Christian.  In the years afterward, as I attempted 
   to go God's way, I set up habits and policies for my life, 
   restructured the way I did things, changed the way I responded 
   to things.  I examined myself, looking for sin, ferreting out 
   sin.  And then I struggled to overcome it, get rid of it.  I 
   struggled to remake myself into the kind of person God would 
   want me to be.  I set wisdom and spiritual understanding as my 
   highest objective.  I determined within myself that I would 
   always be faithful to God and a true Christian.  I struggled 
   with the temptations of this life and all the voices of this 
   ungodly world.  The road was not easy and the way was lonely.  
   I had to find the courage to resist the ways, customs, 
   practices, outlooks, values and attitudes of the world around 
   me.  And all this was done out of love of God, an allegiance to 
   him, my commitment to him.

   True Christianity is about a love of God, an allegiance to God, 
   that shapes, molds and regulates one's life.  To be a true 
   follower of God you must be a serious person, a responsible 
   person, a person willing to live up to commitments.