How would you define being a “christian”?  This might seem rhetoric, right?  A christian is someone who believes in Christ, not so.

In theory, this is correct, but in practice, it entails so much more than simply “believing with your heart and confessing Jesus as Lord and that God raised Him from the dead…” (Paraphrase).  This is obviously a good start and lays the foundation for our faith.

A christian or believer should be a follower of Christ and by “follower”, I mean the following:

  1. we should willfully submit to Christ with our whole being, and
  2. place our trust and faith in Him for salvation, then
  3. dying to self, daily even after having laid down the old sinful life
  4. acknowledge our shortcomings and imperfections each and every day, while
  5. we seek His perfect will for our lives, and continually
  6. consult Him in our ongoing decision making, and above all
  7. make Him known to others

Let us break it down:

1. We should willfully submit to Christ with our whole being

What does this mean?  Does it mean we should give in to Him and let Him have His own way, just because He can? If it is against your free will, then absolutely NOT! He would not expect you to.  Yes, we were created with a free will, whether you want to believe it or not.  For this reason, He will not force you to do anything against your will.  The reason being this.  He was God in the flesh, during His time on earth, knowing what our deepest struggles are, and because God is love, by implication you are given a choice to love Him back or should you decide you would rather not; He will respect your decision.

Question?

Why then would you want to submit to Christ if you can make your own decisions, choosing to do this or that, or go this way or that way, and not forced to do anything you do not like?  This is the challenging part.  You would want to submit to Jesus because He loves you and has this perfect plan for you, right? Perhaps this would be true in a perfect world, you might think. 

This life is full of challenges, trials and tribulations and more often than not, things do not quite work out the way we want and this is the whole point.  Submitting to Him, allows God to work His way into your life, bit by bit, little by little, because He knows best.  No one said life would be perfect, but it would make sense, because He gives purpose to our lives, regardless of our circumstances.

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