You made a decision for Jesus Christ or you have been saved a long time but are stuck. What should you do?
Let see what Paul said in his letter to the Colossians.
COL 3:2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
COL 3:5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
What does that tell us? First we need to keep our mind on things from heaven, not things from here. We are now a new person, so we need to quit doing the things we used to do and start doing the things God would have us do.
How do we get renewed? The list of things we shouldn't do is pretty easy to follow, but how do we learn what we should do? We have to find out. How do we do that? We do it by reading the Word of God, which is the Bible.
We do it by associating with other people that think the same, so we can discuss what we read and learn from one another. It's like reprogramming a computer, you get out of it what you put into it.
Being saved means you should be a new person, you should have he desire to be a new person. We should try to become like Jesus. How is that?
Lets see some of the things we are suppose to do:
COL 3:12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
COL 3:15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
You are saying: There is no way. Who can live up to that? No one.
So if no one can live up to this, why should we even bother? Because God wants us to give it our best effort.
When you receive Jesus as your savior, you should have the desire to want to live for God. If that desire is not there, you have to ask yourself what went wrong.
So you have the desire, but you always fail and come up short? Will God leave you? Lets see what the Bible says.
HEB 13:5 "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."
1JN 2:12 I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
As you have read God promises never to leave us or forsake us, all he asks is that we make an effort.
So lets do the best we can.
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