Growing as a Christian
This page is a follow-on from the page 'Becoming a Christian' and should be helpful for any believer. If you have not yet decided to follow Jesus Christ, then you may like to check that page out first.
A New Relationship
Have you ever belonged to anything - a club or a sports team, the armed forces - anything? How do you get the most out of it? By throwing yourself into it wholeheartedly. It is no different for people who choose to follow Jesus Christ. The more you put in, the more you get out.
When you decided to turn away from the past and agreed to follow Christ you did far, far more than just join a club. You entered into a relationship with God Himself - through His Son Jesus - and just like any human relationship, if we work at the relationship and want it to succeed, it will. If you treat it as if it didn't matter - then it will wither and die away in the same way that our friendships soon die away if we don't have any contact with our friends. So there are several ways in which we can work at developing our new relationship / friendship with God.
Tell Somebody!
If you have recently become a Christian, the chances are that you will want to tell somebody - but it is important for your well-being that you do so, whether or not you want to. In fact, God tells us to do that and if we have decided to follow Him, of course we want to do what He says is important!
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)
What this is saying is that believing is one part - but telling people is also important. Once you tell someone something, you really are committed to it. So it takes something called Faith - and Faith is one of the things that we are told pleases God. Remember about developing that relationship? Pleasing God is a great place to start!
This can be found in the Bible in a book called Romans, Chapter 10 verse 9. You can check it out to see the context (and to make sure that I'm being straight with you) by looking in a bible - that's another good thing to do! I'll talk more about the Bible later.
Find a Church
You may not have any experience of churches - you may even have had a bad experience - but we have noticed that Christians do not usually grow unless they have the chance to meet with other believers. God's handbook for His people - the Bible - has something to say about that as well:
And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another ....
(Hebrews 10:25 NLT) Finding a good church can be a bit hit or miss - but here are a few hints:- Try to find a church where there are a selection of age ranges AND people are friendly and welcoming.
- If you are to grow as a Christian you will need a church that can teach you. A good sign is that the minister teaches from the bible and uses bible verses to illustrate his points.
- Make sure that the church that you have selected recognises that Jesus is the Son of God. The bible puts it like this:
So I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God will curse Jesus, and no one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:3 NLT). You can be fairly confident that a church that says clearly that Jesus is Lord is going to be OK.
- Perhaps the most important test is this. When you agreed to follow Jesus Christ, God's Holy Spirit entered your life and brought your own spirit 'alive'. That's all part of the relationship with God that I mentioned before. God's Spirit will help you to find the right place. When you go there, just ask God quietly, "Please show me if this is the right place for me". You will start to feel either good or not about your choice - that's the Holy Spirit gently guiding you. The more you practice asking God to lead your decisions, the easier you will find it to hear His 'voice'.
The fact that you feel that God is saying "No" by His Spirit doesn't necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with a church, by the way. It just means that, for whatever reason, God has one that is more appropriate for your situation.
Don't make the common mistake of thinking that the church is a building - the Bible teaches that the Church is the Body of Christ. If that seems strange think of it like this: Jesus Christ is no longer here in his body to do the things that He did in the Bible, but He has His representatives - that would be you and me and all believers everywhere. We are His arms and feet and legs - in short - His Body. So at Riverside Porto we don't like to talk about the Catholic Church or the Protestant Church or any of the other divisions that exist. We believe that there is only one Church - the Body of Christ. All of these divisions simply represent different ways that people like to do things. They don't matter to us - as long as people are following and serving Christ, they are part of The Church.
One last thing - in most English speaking countries there is a good selection of churches to choose from. If you are in a non-English speaking country, however, you might want to check on-line for a church where English is spoken. If you search in your web browser for "International Christian Church in <your location>" you will probably find some to choose from. That's where Riverside Porto fits into the overall picture.
Get a Bible
I will be writing more about the Bible on a separate page later. For the moment you can think of the Bible as the Christian's handbook. We know it as The Word of God and believe that God inspired the men who wrote and selected it. From experience most Christians will tell you that the Bible can be trusted and believed completely. So, if you want to know what God is saying to His people you will need one. At the beginning a copy of the New Testament would be sufficient - but eventually you will want the whole thing. I recommend a modern translation - simply because the words will be in current English and therefore easier to read than the translations that were made several decades or even centuries ago. I use the New Living Translation and recommend that or the Good News Bible, which was written for people who are not native English speakers. If you are in that category a bible in your own language might be best, of course! But as long as you are confortable with the language and style, there are no bad bibles.
Indeed, we think that it is so important for a young believer that we will mail you a simple English New Testament if you ask us. It isn't the prettiest one that you will find, but it is still the Word of God!
If you would like a daily bible verse to read and think about, we have one that changes every day on this page: "The Word of God"
Follow Christ in Baptism and in Sharing Bread and Wine
The Christian life is not full of rigourous commands to be obeyed - it is primarily about entering into and enjoying a relationship with Almighty God through the wonderful sacrifice of Jesus Christ. However, there were at least two things that we are asked to do to follow Him:
"Each one of you must turn away from your sins and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins will be forgiven; and you will receive God's gift, the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2:38 GNB) On the night when He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then He broke it in pieces and said, "This is My body, which is given for you. Do this to remember Me." In the same way, He took the cup of wine after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant between God and His people—an agreement confirmed with My blood. Do this to remember Me as often as you drink it." (1 Corinthians 11:23-25 NLT)As a church we offer communion monthly (on the first Sunday) and baptism whenever requested by a believer.
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