What it Takes to be a Christian
Pastor J. R. Wilhite, author
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In this study it will seem like I repeated things more than usual, but that is to help to get the Word inside of you. The more you hear something the more it takes root in you and grows.
To be a Christian is to be Christ like, and to understand what it means to be Christ like, we need to understand Christ.
First of all "Christ" is a Greek word and it is not the last name of Jesus or title. It is describing what Jesus is as Christ. Christ is Greek and in English it is "the anointed one".
So Jesus was the Son of God and anointed of God.
What was He anointed with?
Luke 4
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord
I Corinithians
24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
Jesus is the way to God; He is our salvation; His blood washes us clean. However, "the Christ" is the way to have a relationship with God.
We are called of God via His spirit when we know that we are missing something in our life and God offers it to us.
Being saved is the first step; it gives us our eternal salvation.
To receive all the gifts and prosperity and healing we must be of Christ, to be anointed of the Holy Spirit in, on, and though our entire being.
From basic salvation to the anointing we are like children in kindergarten class. We are there but with very little knowledge, wisdom, or experience.
The Holy Spirit calls us to be saved and to a ministry. This hopefully opens a door for God to work on and through us. The amount we give of our time determines how fast we will grow. At first we are babies in a nursery arguing over the toys, but as we give time to the Holy Spirit and listen (not talking) to the Spirit we grow.
John 14:26
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
We attend church to grow and learn how to hear from God. Then we attend church to sing His praises for what He has done for us and help the younger Christians to grow.
At some point we hear the Lord well enough to grow via the Spirit of God.
I John 2:27
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.
As we grow and walk with Him we learn what really is important in our life and what is not, and hopefully we let go of all the things in our life that hold us back.
In review: we are saved by grace through Jesus, the Holy Spirit calls us and lets us know we are missing something in our life. Then we confess our belief.
Romans 10
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
So we have been saved from death and the grave for the next life, and the next life is as real as this one. Think about an unborn baby in the womb, they only know the womb and nothing more; that is their whole universe. While we are here, we are like that baby in the womb, we know this life and this life only until we are delivered into the next.
Now you can go on just being saved and make it to the next life, but there is a larger chance you will fall away if you do not grow while you are here. Like a baby we can not be sure to make it if we are premature.
After we are saved we need to spend as much time as possible in the word and listening to God. Just as a baby in the womb can be soothed by its mother's voice, so can we by our Father's voice (God).
In this world if you learn well and grow and go to college you will do better than someone who only finished high school. To do better here we also need to grow in the Word of God via the Holy Spirit.
Like here and now when you learn and grow things change for you. You learn what money is, and that this life seems to revolve around the need for it. In turn you learn how to make money and be comfortable.
With Christ we can also learn that money is not the center of all things and that it is just a tool and we can use this tool to help us and how to get as much from the tool as needed.
Also like a baby, we can get confused by listening to too many people. A Baby listens to its mother or father and learns to walk, talk and so on. If many people are trying to teach the baby at the same time, the baby can get confused and not learn as well. We are the same. We can listen to a lot of people and become confused, going from one church to another, or listen to God and learn from Him (John 14:26, I John 2:27).
You need to understand that as a newborn Christian you are no different than a newborn baby. Most of the time, the sex of a baby is not known until it is born. In this life it is whether we are of God or not.
A baby in the womb is growing; it lives in a totally different world than us (surrounded by water) and when it is born then we know if it is a boy or a girl. Afterwards what we become is mostly up to us. If we study and learn and grow we can be very successful in this life.
Now look at us before we are of Christ and right after we become of Christ. We are confused, we are not sure about life, we are re-born and then know we are saved for a new life and for prosperity here and now. Llike the successful people here and now we can either be a success or failure depending on how close we get to God via the Holy Spirit and His word.
Romans 8
16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
How can you know you are a saved child of God if the Holy Spirit does not tell you?
You are not sure and then you can fall away and miss the whole thing due to being lazy and not finding out for yourself, Instead you tried to do it by reading the books of everyone else who has made it. It is like a diet. There are millions of them because each person requires a different way to lose weight. So by reading others ways of losing weight you are missing your way. Salvation and growth in the kingdoms are as different as weight loss programs are, meaning that there are most likely as many different weight loss programs as there are people. And the same goes for growth in the kingdom.
Now you finally realize after reading 10-20-30 books on how to speak in tongues and how to have the gifts of the Spirit and how to be of the spirit, you stop reading and start going to the author of the main book the Bible. You start reading the Bible and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you to find your way to God.
More people waste more time trying to get right with God by reading every book on the subject, when the whole time they could be doing it themselves by listening for God's voice and hearing directly from Him.
So, you accept the Lord in your life as total Lord over everything.
Then you take time daily to listen to God and some it takes a day or two and others it is months. As you are spending time listening you are reading the Bible starting with all the John's in the New Testament.
You need to understand how you can please God and how God will reward you in this lifetime.
Hebrews 11
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
How do we get faith?
Romans 8
17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
With faith we can grow and become men and women of God.
While growing, some of the biggest downfalls of a lot of Christians is judging others, being legalistic, or legalism leaving no place for grace.
Matthew 7
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Mark 11
22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
25 And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
Do not judge. Jesus came not to judge but to save (John 3:17) and if He does not judge us, we should not judge. We are judged by the words of our mouth.
We listen to God and grow in Him and as we do we release all the concerns of this world to Him and only become concerned with His work.
By hearing you are saved; you hear a call to God, then faith comes by hearing and as we sit and listen to God. Hearing, we learn all we need to know and whom we should help and whom to avoid.
Some churches out there are more dangerous to attend than not. So what do you do?
You pray and ask God for guidance and allow Him to guide you to the church that is best for you.
Now that you are saved, hearing from God, and growing be sure you are tithing.
The tithe is the first 10% of your gross, not your net income. That means if you gross $200 but only net $170.00 you give $20 because that is 10% of your gross.
Malachi 3
8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.
12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.
There is an enemy out there who wants to devour you like a lion. He will force his thoughts on you and try to make you believe they are true and yours.
He will say, "Ten percent! I can not afford that, it is too much, how about 1,2 or even 3 % of my gross." Anything under 10 will not help you…it is robbing God. This is where faith comes in. Faith in God and His word and that He will do what He says He can do.
If you are struggling anyway, like living from paycheck to paycheck then you need to tithe. Because the reason you are having troubles in your finances is because you are not tithing and giving God control of the fruit of your labor.
When I tithed at first it seemed like it was doing nothing for me so I stopped tithing long enough to see that God was protecting my money.
In time other blessings came as well as a result of tithing and giving.
Who do you tithe to?
Who ever is feeding you. If you attend a church and it is the head of a Bible class that is feeding you and not the pastor, then tithe to the church and on your check in the memo section write the name of the person who has fed you.
attending church should not be a ritual or tradition; it should be a time you get to go and praise God and share your witness with others at the church, to up lift others and to edify them. Yes, at first you go to learn, and you should learn how to hear from God and then get to a point of hearing from God that you can help others at the church.
Those who attend every function of the church but do not display the fruit of the Spirit of God are not growing and may be falling away. Goodness and righteousness is not based on how much you give of your time, talents and money. It is based on what Jesus did for us all.
Someone could spend their whole life in church, even be a pastor and still go to Hell. The path to Hell is paved with good intentions.
We are not about works. Yes, in James it says faith without works is dead, and that is true, but James was not referring to what we do as much as what our faith does. If our faith is not working in our lives then our faith is dead. Understand that if your faith is alive there will be evidence of it at work in health, finances, relationships, etc.
All of this is about love, the love God has for us.
John 3
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
All God wants is a relationship with us, like any father would want with their children. He wants to bless us.
We want to be blessed, but without the time needed for the relationship.
Too many try it once for a few days and then state that faith does not work.
The first time most children get on a bike they fall, so we put training wheels on to help them and in time we can remove the training wheels and the child can ride on his/her own.
The same goes for faith. For some it takes a real long time, while for others not so long or even the same day. It is not that faith does not work, it is we are too impatient to allow it to work.
So, we are saved, then we start listening for God via the Holy Spirit and as we grow we cast down all thoughts that are not of God and we grow to the point where others ask us for help and we see our life changing before our own eyes. Not a life of the sort some would expect it to be (a legalistic life) but a life of love, where things are great to have and you can have them as long as they do not have you.
Seek a life where you hear from God constantly and are blessed by His love to the point things change in you. Don't get freaked out, when I say changed. There are always things that need to be changed to help us grow in all areas and live a happy and healthy life.
Here it is in a nutshell
God Bless You as you hear His words and follow His leading.
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