Next Steps: Learning to Tell Your God Story预览

After Jesus.

Obviously, after you choose to follow Jesus every single problem goes away and you are only happy and never make a bad choice or are hurt ever again! Wrong! Unfortunately, that’s not true (although it would be nice right?!)

After you choose to follow Jesus, you begin something called sanctification. Sanctification is a long fancy word that essentially means going through the process of becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. It’s important to remember that even though God has given you eternal life, you are still human. You will continue to fall short and fall into sin and temptation. The honest truth is that you will still struggle; you might miss a day of prayer or get angry with your kids or struggle with winter blues. (I know because these are all things I’ve experienced since choosing to follow Jesus!)

This next part is important though, because even though you and your life aren’t perfect, you have hope in the One who is! The hope we have in Jesus allows us to seek forgiveness and give forgiveness, it compels us to encourage others and to be generous with our time and money. It allows us to stop worrying about the future and to give up control to the good God who already knows how the story will end. The hope of Jesus changes our desires to match His and gives us the fortitude to resist temptation and continue to turn away from sin. Most importantly, our “after choosing Jesus” is not just about us becoming more like Him and learning more, it’s us telling others around us about who He is and what He has done!

Since we’ve been chatting about Paul these last few days, I wanted to bring him up one more time. Paul’s story of coming to Jesus is an encouragement; it is proof of what God can do in someone’s life, but his story doesn’t end at his moment of salvation. In fact, his story is just beginning when we meet him on the road to Damascus. Paul goes on to write 13 books in the New Testament, plant at least 14 churches, and take four missionary journeys. Some scholars even argue that because of Paul sharing the gospel, it’s how Christianity got to be such a widespread faith. After you choose to follow Jesus, your story is just beginning! God can do so much through you, and God can change the lives and eternities of others through your obedience to living your life for Christ.

Today’s challenge: Once again grab that pen and paper or device and write out this last part to your story:

How has your life changed since coming to know Jesus?

Again, don’t overthink this. It’s not going to be perfect, but there’s been a change. Maybe even set some goals for what you hope to accomplish in the future as you continue to live your life for Christ!