Steps To Becoming A Follower Of Christ

JESUS SAID "I AM THE LIVING WATER!" Even as it flows freely from these rocks on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

As we enter into the holiday season, I thought I would post just a short instruction with supporting scripture to becoming a follower of the One who is the source of the season.

Steps to Becoming a Follower of Christ

1. Know that He, Jesus, is seeking you. Start with Revelation 3:20
   “Look at me. I stand at the door. I knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you.

2. The process begins with repentance. Turn around, that is, change your ways. Jesus brought this message often, but look at Luke 13:3 Unless you turn to God, you too will die.” Don’t get to freaked out by this, Jesus also said, “I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” What Jesus wants from us, is to be sorry, and to change…He gives us His Spirit to help in the process.

3. It isn’t some big deal; we just have to call on Him. Romans 10:12 ff Scripture reassures us, “No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.” It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help. “Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help.”
   But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it?

4. The life change is immediate, and coming from God. Jesus said, “It’s urgent that you listen carefully to this: Anyone here who believes what I am saying right now and aligns himself with the Father, who has in fact put me in charge, has at this very moment the real, lasting life and is no longer condemned to be an outsider. This person has taken a giant step from the world of the dead to the world of the living. ” John 5:24

5. The life change is the beginning of eternal life and it is secure, Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep recognize my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them real and eternal life. They are protected from the Destroyer for good. No one can steal them from out of my hand. The Father who put them under my care is so much greater than the Destroyer and Thief. No one could ever get them away from him. I and the Father are one heart and mind.”

6. The reason we need this new life, is because of sin. Sin is anything that separates us from God. The Bible tells us the following about sin in Romans 3:23-24, “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.

7. 1 John 2:1-7 Jesus has taken care of this problem for us and there are some ways to measure if we are truly receiving His forgiveness and walking in and under His power. I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When he served as a sacrifice for our sins, he solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s.
   THE ONLY WAY TO KNOW WE’RE IN HIM
   Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep his commandments.
   If someone claims, “I know him well!” but doesn’t keep his commandments, he’s obviously a liar. His life doesn’t match his words. But the one who keeps God’s word is the person in whom we see God’s mature love. This is the only way to be sure we’re in God. Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived.
   My dear friends, I’m not writing anything new here. This is the oldest commandment in the book, and you’ve known it from day one. It’s always been implicit in the Message you’ve heard. On the other hand, perhaps it is new, freshly minted as it is in both Christ and you—the darkness on its way out and the True Light already blazing!
   Anyone who claims to live in God’s light and hates a brother or sister is still in the dark. It’s the person who loves brother and sister who dwells in God’s light and doesn’t block the light from others. But whoever hates is still in the dark, stumbles around in the dark, doesn’t know which end is up, blinded by the darkness.

8. Once we have accepted the forgiveness that He offers and allowed ourselves to begin to operate in His Love, nothing can remove us from it. We see in Romans 8:28, “None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us”.

9. God’s love is for everybody. There is nothing that can keep us from it. We read in John 3:16, “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. ” “

The Bible is full of lessons and promises that are for each of you. These few outlined merely give us a starting point to life in, with, and through Jesus.