Grow in Christ

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FOR NEW CHRISTIANS – Grow in Christ – Ray E Horton

Once you have received Jesus by choosing to believe in your heart, speak that decision forth to others: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). You are now a child of God, since “to all who received Him, He gave the power to become sons of God, to those who believed in His name” (John 1:12).

You have begun a wonderful journey. He hasn’t taken you out of the circumstances of life, but He will see you through.

Be sure to:

• Pray regularly, which is simply conversation with God
• Find good Christian friends to hang out with to encourage and mentor you, usually found in a good church.
• Ask a spirit-filled believer to pray with you for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, which provides power and spiritual gifts for victory in this life and for service to others.

You can now draw on the many precious promises of God’s Word for those who believe: “God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him” (Phil. 2:13 NLT); “He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:8), and much more.

You are now “in Christ,” and God’s Word says, “Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Look, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). “God made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us [you], that we [you] might become the righteousness of God in Him” (Vs. 21).

Your new “righteousness is undeserved and based on nothing you have done. It is not self-righteousness. It is a gift to the saved.”

That righteousness is undeserved and based on nothing you have done. It is not self-righteousness. It is a gift to the saved, those who are born again, like you: “...those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (Roman 5:17).

Draw on that abundance of grace within, mindful that you have His righteousness, and you will be victorious and “reign in life” through Him. Your spirit (your very identity) is now perfected in Him, once and for all, and is joined with the Holy Spirit. Meanwhile, your soul (that is, mind, will, and emotions) is in progress, and old ways and habits will take time to fall off.

Yes, you will forget and fall from time to time. But, knowing who you now are in Christ, simply repent (turn back to Him) and go on, knowing “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” (Rom. 8:1). As you continue in Him, renewing your mind in His Word, which is like a mirror, relying on the spirit within who reminds you of who you are now in Christ, you will grow from “glory to glory“:

“But we all, seeing the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).

(Written and first posted May 28, 2016).