Congratulations! If you’ve heard the gospel message and have come to believe it, you are now a Christian.
This is not as simple as you may imagine. Your entire existential view of the world will likely invert itself a few times, and God will require you to experience some tremendous changes to your lifestyle. Expect to have quite a few bad habits confronted, and prepare for an uphill battle to start many good habits to replace them.
You’re not alone, however. As a new Christian, you’re developing a relationship with God, which starts with reading your Bible and praying. Your greatest source of social connection will come through your affiliation with the Church at large, even if you don’t specifically associate with a denomination.
The Bible itself is a big book compilation, so here are a few places to start reading if you’re lost and don’t know where to start:
- Read the Gospel of John.
- Read the other 3 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).
- Read the rest of the New Testament.
- Read the Old Testament.
- Re-read more in-depth, with a more keen eye toward heavy study.
- To the degree you care, explore the non-canonical texts and history in general, bearing in mind the distorting lens of history.
As you become more experienced with being a Christian, learning more about the Being that made you will slowly reveal who you are. Over time, you’ll develop an understanding of how we are all designed. This information can often be uncomfortable, but He will reward you if you dig deeper into it.
As you start making changes, other people will notice. Expect a rift between at least some of your family and friends, and you may have to change out your entire social network. The unbelieving world will consider your thoughts and motivations an utter mystery, so your new community will typically need to be other believers. This typically happens over years, though, so there’s no need to rush it.
As Christians, the God of love has called us to love our neighbors and enemies. This is not easy, but God graciously and generously teaches us. Expect to fail a lot in your service, and expect plenty of humbling as He steadily teaches you what you need to learn.
Your new salvation experience will bring you through a type of trend within yourself:
- You’re responsible for claiming control of your soul in His name, and you’ll immediately become heavily aware of your sins.
- You’ll be provoked to change habits in your daily life.
- As you discover your identity in Christ, your spiritual gifts will express themselves more vividly.
- As you start making consequences in your daily life, you may start veering too far into an extreme.
- After a few extremes, you’ll eventually round out your life through continued devotion (which typically takes 5–20 years, based on many factors) and God will likely position you to become a spiritual leader yourself.
Your growth will come directly from God, not through your direct efforts (Philippians 2:13), so don’t obsess too heavily about “getting it right” (Matthew 11:28–30). He’ll reveal what you need to change in His timing, and it’ll be abundantly obvious (James 3:17). You’ll face your greatest challenges in making the right decisions.
You will face resistance. Besides the limitations of your psychology to living as sinless as possible, your family may not like the changes you’re making, the devil is constantly out to deceive you, and many governments have illegalized your beliefs. One of the clearest signs of spiritual growth is that you experience strong, irreconcilable conflicts with the world and other believers, ranging from being tragically misunderstood all the way to hardship and violence against you.
The chaos will sometimes not relent, but God keeps a plan through all of it. He’ll be back to deal with this world’s corruption, so there’s no reason to over-obsess or become political about your faith.
Never forget what drove you to Jesus in the first place, but don’t be surprised if your motivations change. You may have been afraid of hell, wanted a truly spiritual experience, or simply saw that the God of the Bible was the real one. It matters more that you finish the race than that you started it.
You’ll also discover further conflicts as you grow. Churches often bicker over things with little to no spiritual benefit, which has been going on since the Church was founded and will continue until Jesus returns. We’re all waiting, but we don’t have much of a timetable for it and have trouble meanwhile agreeing on any shared purpose.