This week I asked my Bible study students what advice they would give to a new Christian. Here’s the list they came up with:
1. It gets better – moving away from temptation is difficult at first
2. Get baptized
3. Attend church and read your Bible
4. Don’t expect God to fix all of your problems, you need to help, too
5. Try your best to live it out
6. Get rooted in church and find accountability. Find people to help your morale
7. Grow spiritually
After we had our list, we went through each item and discussed what they meant by them and why they would give that piece of advice. I then went back through the list and asked the group if they were doing each item on the list. That kind of stung, but they got the point. It’s not enough to know what to do, we actually have to do it.
I did not use any biblical references for this exercise, but there are plenty to go with it. I just wanted them to get slapped in the face a little bit by the reality that they need to be taking these steps they would recommend to others.
That was one of the best weeks we’ve had this year. Part of it might have been because we had this conversation at Dairy Queen over Blizzards.
