Christianity is not a spectator sport – it is a team that needs every person faithfully participating to the best of their ability. Too many people think a Church is a club, a building, or an organisation - but it is a group of followers of Jesus Christ, working solidly together for the evangelisation of the whole world – and it is the most exciting and rewarding activity any human being can be a part of! So, below are some suggestions to help every believer get more active as Christians:
Make sure of your relationship with Jesus Christ. Just believing in “God,” and just being religious makes no difference to eternity (James 2:19). You MUST be born again, and follow the commands of Jesus Christ to be a Christian. Any other kind of life is a lie and a dead-end.
Stay in Love with Your Saviour Jesus Christ! The greatest commandment in the Bible is for a person to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” (Matthew 24:37). It is easy to grow cold if you are not careful about staying in love with Jesus!
Get your own Bible – get a good Bible that will last you. Put your name and address in it, and start reading it every day, starting in Matthew, reading it until you finish Revelation. Then start in Genesis, and read it through to the end! It is in the Bible that you will find the encouragement and instructions that you need every day.
Get Baptized the Biblical way. The first step of obedience to the Lord Jesus is public baptism. If a person is not willing to make their new relationship known, then they don’t have much of a relationship with God after all. Jesus told His disciples to, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). If you were “sprinkled” as a baby, it doesn’t count since you were neither born again nor immersed like the Bible commands it to be done. Make your baptism sure.
Join up with this Church, or with a Bible-Believing Baptist Church in your area. A Church helps people commit themselves to the goals of the Lord Jesus for that community, both prayerfully, personally, and financially.
Be in Every Church Meeting. Every time the Church gathers together is another time of encouragement from God’s word, and from other Christians. Missing it, you may miss just what you need to hear from God’s word, and someone may miss the encouragement that you could have offered just by being there!
Expect Spiritual Attacks from your enemy, the devil. People forget that the devil doesn’t give up on them once they get born again. You need to expect that he is going to try and side-track you, and discourage you all the time - so be ready for it!
Start Discipleship Class. These are weekly classes that go through Bible lessons covering vital Biblical subjects every Christian needs to learn and live by.
Get out and start witnessing – talk to anyone and everyone around you about what it means to be a Christian, and being born again, and start inviting people to come out to Church to hear the Good News about eternal life in Christ!
Pray for your Pastor, and the people in this Church. It is hard to work and worship along side people you don’t know care enough to pray for.
There are other ways to get more involved (like Enrolling in our Bible Institute, and helping teach a children’s Bible class), but start with these and you will go far!