The Christian life

The world is full of knowledge, cultures, traditions and all other sorts of things that people have come to associate themselves with over the years.

The Christian life

Many of these date centuries back and are in many places the yardstick of behavior and belief in several places around the world and amongst people. In fact, some have successfully evolved into institutions with hierarchies to which throngs of individuals subscribe to.

One of the most successful forms of institutional organizations across the globe has been religion, whether Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism or any other. When it comes to Christianity, however, the sects that have been forged within it over the years have watered down the realities of what it is all about and these alterations have been vividly seen and accepted across generations. As is with any other religious institution, Christianity has now come to be perceived as advocacy of peace, harmony, fairness, and love.

It is about empathy and goodwill which are all right yet not even close to fully explaining or revealing what Christianity is actually all about. There is no existing faith or religion that is without values and many of these cut across, to the extent that religion has been interpreted as the conditioning that demoralizes the prevalence of evil and lawlessness. In modern context, Christianity is about one’s manners, dress code, and interrelation with those around them. This is merely moral Christianity, a version of it that entirely downplays the true essence of Christianity.

It is recorded in the Book of Acts that, Christianity started when the disciples were referred to as Christian, to mean, those who are like Christ, or Christ-like. This was after that they had been seen to live and manifest a life that was exactly as that of the Christ, Jesus. This would mean that one can actually take alcohol or not, wear the long non-revealing cloth and yet without the manifestation of the likeness of Christ, they are merely associates with the Lord, not “Christian”. The Christian life is in reality a continual experience with the Lord. Several Christians know the scriptures but do not have an experience of these scriptures inasmuch as they profess to believe them. The Bible, which is God’s Word is also called the “Living Word of God”. You may then ask yourself this question; why was the Bible written?

Was is it just written to be read as any other good book? Is it a mere anthology, full of stories of men who did incredible exploits in the name of God? Or do we read it as a collection of historical accounts of the Lord and His life? No, on the contrary, the Scriptures themselves testify that they were written as an example for us. This would suggest that just as they give accounts of supernatural feats, these exemplify what we ought to know can happen to us as well who believe in the Lord whom they testify about. In other words, the Bible is written for you to experience the same exact life of the Lord.

However, several professing Christians are only taken up by association with the Lord yet it is far more important that you be a protégé. Being merely in association with Lord will hinder you from grasping the full benefits and rewards a protégé will have access it. The former will not manifest exactly what the Lord would love them manifest as is with the latter. Associates merely attach themselves but do not identify as one with that which they associate with.

The scriptures say that it's the glory of Lord to conceal a matter and the honor of the king to search it out. Unlike an associate, a protégé has the privilege to search the secrets of the Lord out because he has access to everything necessary to turn out what their master would desire for them to be. These secrets when found, become yours because they are actually given to you by the Lord. If the Lord had no secrets, it would be vain to mention that He has them and that they can be searched out. This, therefore, holds true that He indeed has secrets that can be searched out, found and be used to transform lives.

Take for instance, the secret Jesus uses to multiply two fish and five loaves to feed five thousand men and still have an excess full twelve baskets left. Or the secret Samson had to slay a whole Philistine army, armed to the teeth, with a donkey’s jaw bone. Or Jesus opening the eyes of a blind man using spittle and mud. Or the Lord creating an illusion in an army’s ears by making the footsteps of four lepers sound to them as the sound of hundreds of oncoming armies on chariots. Or the one Moses uses to part the red sea by lifting a rod or Elijah parting the Jordan using his cloak. Many such spectacular things are written to be more to us than mere readings, which today’s Christianity has made of them.

Imagine, let's say you get the secret of finances, and knew how to multiply your finances. No one whosoever will take it away because it's of the Lord and He has said in His Word that He gives without revocation. It's the devil that takes away in the forms of stealing, killing, and destruction, but the Lord delights in giving, and giving in abundance. Do you remember how Jesus had to pay pending taxes and sent his disciple to catch fish, open its mouth and use the money he found inside it to pay off the tax? That will sound foolish to many believers today because we have stripped the Word of God of its power. We have, like the Pharisees, known the Word but denied its power yet it can be expressly demonstrated not in speech alone, but in power and spirit.

To date, Christians have associated Christianity with poverty to the extent that some sects even take vows of poverty as part of their apparently unadulterated service to God. But the interesting thing about this point of view is how erroneously it depicts the life of God and His will for us. Heaven is recorded to have streets of gold. It’s a pompous place exuding wealth and such glamour, yet here we are, misrepresenting all this excellence. The Bible emphatically states that the Lord would love you to prosper in all things and that though He was rich, gave up His riches to become poor that we may become rich, a contradiction to the ideology of poverty or the disdain of prosperity embraced by the Church today. Remember Joseph in the Bible whom the Lord made prosperous in a foreign land.

If we look back at the Lord’s prayer, amid the forgiveness of sin and request to be delivered from error, Jesus said that we pray that His Kingdom come and that His Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That means that the earth out to be a replica of the very estate of Heaven, full of glamour and the wealth of God alongside having His will prevailing in the earth. The Scriptures refer to us as Ambassadors of Christ, and this means the onus to see the establishment of heaven on earth is upon us as Christians. The reality of Salvation is that the Lord would never let you remain the same In life as the unbelieving person otherwise, we have misunderstood the intent of His Salvation.  He, beyond many things, would always love you to get better in life, which means moving from glory to glory as you keep increasing. But if you remain the same then that ought to be evidence enough that you need to search out the benefits of Salvation that you may manifest the glory of the Lord.

It is without doubt that most Christians have been filled with doctrines and subscribed to religious indoctrination which is actually binding them in one place, not allowing them the liberty to move with the Lord as He wills.

All in all, make up your mind to adjust how you perceive and approach the Scriptures. Know that the words written are real and just as they happened, can still happen. Refuse to just stop at listening and reading the scriptures. You can actually get any experience in the Bible and make it happen to you. Like it says, “Enoch walked with God until he was no more," that portion of scripture can become much more experiential to you that people will no longer see the ordinary you, but see God in you.

 

Written by: Rodrick Were.

The writer is a member of and intern with the National Christian Students Association. (NCSA Youth)