Becoming a Christian is about having a relationship with God by getting to know his Son, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Being a Christian means that you become part of a very large family of people all over the world who desire a permanent, eternal way of living their life with God guiding and directing them by his Holy Spirit. Christians learn about Jesus from the Bible, worship, and from being in fellowship with others.
God treats people as individuals so each person’s story of how they begin and walk in this relationship is different. There are a few common elements to beginning a life directed by God:
1. Beginning to realize that God does love you.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son (Jesus), that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
2. Acknowledge that your actions and beliefs have separated you from God and that only he has the ability to help you change.
“There is no difference, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23. The Message Bible says it this way: “But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him, for there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.”
3. Accept the forgiveness God holds out as available to you from him through what Jesus did in dying on the cross for each of us, and believe that God has the power to change your life through his Holy Spirit.
The modern language translation given in The Message Bible says it this way: “Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins.” 2 Corinthians 5:16-20
4. Begin living your new life in relationship to God.
Talk to a Christian friend or contact us and tell what you have decided and chosen to do. It is important to do this because you are now entering a growth stage in your relationship with God and you will find fellowship with other Christians to be essential.
5. Baptism by water and the Spirit is essential for a full Christian life.
Paul, a dedicated early Christian gives this account to explain baptism to the Roman Christians: "So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!"
That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new life in Jesus. From now on, think of it this way: You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.
That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you've been raised from the dead!—into God's way of doing things. You're living in the freedom of God.
A prayer to start your new life:
Lord Jesus, I regret and am sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me. I don’t want to live that way any more. I believe that you died on the cross for me. Though I probably don’t fully understand all that you did for me now, I believe you did this so I could be forgiven by God and set free to have a relationship with God. Thank you for what you did for me in taking my sin to the cross so I can have life with you and for giving me the gift of your Holy Spirit. I accept your gift of the Holy Spirit forever. I desire to be baptized in water to experience fully and witness to what you have done in my life. I am asking you to take my life and help me live it the way God wants. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen
A Testimony: Returning to Fellowship in the Church
When people tell the story of their life related to having a relationship with God it is referred to as witnessing to what God has done or as giving their testimony. For example, I became a Christian in high school along with my parents by going to hear a speaker from England named Tom Rees talk about Jesus. My whole family decided to become followers of Jesus and to really put God first in our lives. We were actively involved in getting to know more about Christ by studying the Bible and attending church. We were involved in starting fellowships. I married a Christian after he graduated from college and we moved to El Paso. We looked for the Christian experience we had had in New York but could not be satisfied with any one church. Over time we went to church less and less and our jobs became our lives. After twenty years of not really attending church regularly a friend invited us to The Church of St. Clement. Coming back into fellowship with other Christians after such a long time of being without strong relationships with other believers has not been easy. But now I have deeper and truer friends than I ever imagined possible. Do we disagree? Sometimes, but learning to love my neighbor as myself has enhanced and made stronger my relationship to God. God has revealed aspects of himself in others in ways which work to make me a better servant in his kingdom.
Maybe you have been away for a long time, disturbed or disappointed by the Church, or individuals. Don’t let hurts or logic that cries, “hypocrisy” prevent you from regular church fellowship. But don’t just give it another try. Instead determine you will not miss out on the relationships God can give you in fellowship regularly with other believers in Christ. When I finally prayed, “Lord, I am sorry I separated myself from your people; I need to be back in fellowship,” he provided St. Clement and I am grateful for over ten years of growth in depth of relationships, deeper prayer life, opportunities for service and to bear witness to our awesome God. Martha