How Christians Grow

Each new Christian is Self-Responsible (with the help of God’s new power and grace in his life) to CHANGE HIS BEHAVIOR in conformance with behavior that will please God. Essentially, this involves the PUTTING OFF of old sin habits and the PUTTING ON of new Christian habits as described in God’s Word, the Bible.

Breaking old habits is God’s expectation of each new Christian, along with a lifetime of spiritual growth and development. Not only does God expect each Christian to break his old sin habits, but God COMMANDS it. Thus, changing our old life style is not an option, but a mandate. Repenting or turning away from old, ingrained sin patterns is not easy, but IT CAN BE DONE through prayer, faith in God, and committed obedience to His Word. Of course, what you can not do, God can give you the grace to do.

But how does changing oneself work by means of the Bible?

A Christian’s past decisions and behaviors were based on yesterday’s accumulated wrong data since the bible was not used to influence one’s behavior BEFORE one became a Christian. Once a person becomes a Christian, he is still behaviorally the same person he was before. The free gift of salvation does NOT automatically include a disciplined life. As the inclusion of God’s Word in one’s thinking and resulting actions begins to change the old data base, it brings in new ideas that, at first, conflict with the old ideas. Then, the new ideas confront and convict the old behaviors and begin to replace the old, ineffective behavior patterns with divinely approved pleasing ones.

Therefore, what we do today is of supreme importance!

2 Corinthians 10:5 shows that every Christian can destroy old, ineffectual habit patterns by “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” No longer are new Christians to run off at the mouth with old word patterns, allow filthy and immoral thoughts to bounce around in their brains, or let their old lusts and members of their body determine impulsively what their behavior should be by what “feels” good. We are to realize where we have come from and to dump the “uglies” of the past, to look forward, in Christ, to the information of totally different godly, upright behavior patterns. We are to obey the new behaviors commanded by God in His bible for our benefit.

To do this, we must exercise faith in the same way we exercised it when we got saved. We believed and it was so. Now we exercise faith again, believing we can do what God commands, and then we step out and do it regardless of consequences. The Christian’s future life MUST be a continuing life of faith in moving ahead to do those things that he has never done before. Once a Christian steps out and succeeds in doing his first behavioral change by faith, God will reveal the next step. Doing strengthens faith, and faith exercised motivates doing. A Christian must start doing the faith-doing-faith-doing cycle immediately if he is to please God. Until the faith-doing cycle is started and habituated, behavior can’t change and produce the unique Christian that God wants you to be. God has a plan for each of us, but we cannot benefit from any plan He may have made for us until we first act in obedience, yielding to His Holy Spirit. That is what His Scriptures tell us we must do.

In other words, while we are waiting for the Second Coming of Christ to rescue us from the great judgments that are to come upon this Christ-rejecting world, the bible clearly gives us great hope of a major change in our characters at His coming and also encourages us to start now in changing our character and behavior as best we can, from the Scriptures, to get a head start while we still have time.

1 John 3:2 & 3 - “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him just as He is, and every man who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself, just as He (Christ Jesus) is pure.”
In these verses, we see that God expects us to start the purifying process...NOW! He will finish it later. The truth of the bible is in its application - doing EXACTLY what the bible commands us to do - regardless of circumstances, other people’s objections or mocking, or even our own emotional resistance to change. One well-known counselor has said “what makes counseling so difficult is the counselee’s tenacious and unconscious opposition to UN-learning inappropriate (behavioral and emotional) patterns and to learn new and less conflictual ones.” More specifically, our old sin habits fight against change. Yet, change they must!

We repeat again the idea of what we do today is of supreme importance.

We are not to dwell on yesterday’s data that was ineffective but, instead, we are to begin to live each new day with biblical data in new control of our thoughts, words and deeds. We are to reject old feelings, old desires, old corrupt depraved patterns that we had become accustomed to; replacing each sin area (habit) with its opposite, new, Christian, biblically commanded habit that we have never done before. A Christian should look upon each day as a new start to change himself. Christians could well adopt the saying that “Today is the first day of the rest of my life”. Today is the only day that we can really start to make changes. Tomorrow may never come.

Proverbs 27:1 - “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.”

Thus, the most important day in a Christian’s life is always TODAY.

When you first begin to do your new habit pattern, it will come in direct conflict with your old habit pattern. It may seem to your old habit pattern that your new habit pattern is wrong because of the conflict that may be taking place with the old, ingrained pattern. This is a normal feeling expectation when establishing new behaviors. The tugs and pulls that the old habit pattern may try to exert should be ignored and you should move ahead in complete faith and obedience in continuing to develop the new habit pattern. God will provide the grace and strength to succeed. God will not remove the temptations or resistance while you are initiating the change, but He will provide the spiritual strength for you to overcome the temptation and resistance of the old habit pattern. (See 1 Corinthians 10:13)

But what if you fall? You then try again, praying with greater intensity and more frequently, trusting that the Lord is with you in your trials and increasing your solution to succeed, not doubting. (See James 1:6-8) As you keep repeating the new habit pattern with greater and increasing determination, the old habit pattern “gets the message” and begins to break down. At this point the new habit pattern “convinces” the dying old habit pattern that “it” is wrong and NOT the new one.

Of course, our mind is really in control of the changing of our patterns with the patterns themselves being subject to our will. If our will is one with God’s will, we will always succeed in the change process. If we doubt during the change, we get a mixed result (double-mindedness) and instability will result. Change occurs by sitting at one end of the “teeter-totter” or at the other, not by sitting in the MIDDLE. Partial submission or wavering will frustrate the complete change. (1 John 5:14&15)

Changing behavior is like an addition and subtraction process. It is the addition of something new, unprecedented and untried by the mind or subconscious which, at first, causes a crisis of wavering and a personal struggle with oneself to install a new self-discipline. What this wavering represents is a “warfare” or power struggle between his will to turn away from sinful habits and his flesh that is content to retain the old sinful habits.

The flesh abhors any kind of self-discipline and avoids all attempts at self-control. It evades the pain of withdrawal from treasured sins of the old nature and will rebel until subdued and dealt with by its opposite, godly, behavioral counterpart. This warfare is common to all Christians: his feelings might want to do one thing (the old ineffectual things), but in his mind, he now knows what he must do to be in obedience to God’s Word.

Changing one’s character as a Christian, to conform to Christ’s character, is a lifelong process. There is no way to become an instant super-saint. Trying to act “pious” does not effect change. Change is an internal process that is progressive. If a Christian would want to know how to become a super-Christian in the shortest amount of time, the solution is quite simple: BECOME OBEDIENT TO EVERY BEHAVIORAL COMMAND IN THE BIBLE...IMMEDIATELY!

Of course, no one is capable of doing that all at once, but the formula: become obedient to every behavioral command in the bible is an ideal that the Christian does well to keep foremost in his daily “walk with Christ”.

By behavioral command, we mean “attitudes” and our thought life, as well.

Proverbs 23:7 - “...as he thinks within himself, so he is.”

It is our inner thoughts and desires that shape our external actions. Therefore, even our motives for doing anything must come under the bible’s scrutiny.

Colossians 3:17 - “whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”

Our motives must be biblically correct to produce a biblical change.

2 Corinthians 10:5 - “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

Are you doing that now? If not, when do you intend to start? All we Christians come out of a different backgrounds and each have a unique corruption in our old character. Some of us liked different sin habits and sin styles than others. Some murderers would never think of “stealing”. Some thieves would never think of “murdering”. It seems contradictory but we all like our own pet sins. God’s will is that we overcome these sin habits and replace them with godly habits. To be jealous of other Christians or envy what appears to be an easier life is wrong judgment. We ought not to compare all the troubles that we have with those of other Christians. We need to get out own act together.

John 7:24 - “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”

We envy so-called “godly” men and women because they seem to be having little struggle with their own character. However, sometimes “struggle” can be an internal problem that can’t be seen by men but can be seen by God. Just because a Christian does not “appear” to be having any struggles with his character externally, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have any problems.

Also, sometimes a person who has been a Christian for 10 or 15 years may seem to have a peaceful life that we would like to have for our own life, too. Yet, we forget that there may be a 10 or 15 year “head start” having taken every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” from a mature Christian that we can’t possibly catch up to in only 3 or 4 months.

We need to go through the same 10 or 15 years of practicing godliness the same way older Christians have had to (and continue to) discipline themselves to God’s Word. Then there are 10 or 20 year Christians who are still babes in Christ; those who have never submitted to Christ’s discipleship and who may appear relatively calm in their character with few apparent problems. We also see 10, 20 and 30 year Christians - so called - who never truly believed but who fool us with their unperturbed and quiet life styles lacking any anguish or character difficulties.

In the end, we are not to look horizontally at other men to determine how we should act. Instead, we should be looking vertically, keeping our eye on the obedience to Christ and His holy word for our character example to follow. We will be judged some day by God and we will give an account of all our thoughts, words and actions done in obedience to the bible’s commands, not on how well we imitated or mimicked other Christians.

This is not to say that a new Christian can’t learn good behavior by watching a mature Christian. He can but only to a certain point. There comes a time that even the mature Christians have lacks in their characters that new Christians can’t imitate. A new Christian sooner or later comes to the realization that he can’t rely on anyone else but himself to be responsible for his own behavior and that only he, himself, will have to put into exercised practice (Hebrews 5:14) what God has commanded him to do. That means that even those “uniquely corrupt” behaviors that we developed in our unsaved years, we are responsible to start today to get rid of.

A person might try to learn to play a trombone by sitting next to someone who is experienced and watching how far (in and out) the other player moved his trombone slide. Sooner or later, however, as the music gets faster and more difficult, the imitator will realize he “simply can’t keep up” with the changes. He will have to take his music home and “practice” it. Likewise, we do not become mature Christians by rote-imitation. We become mature Christians by nose-to-the-grindstone, exercised practice. Of course, we will not be alone in changing ourselves. God is with us, providing the strength and encouragement, but we must still do the practice.

Consequently, changing our behavior is a learned technique requiring effort, practice time, self-control and the addition of new behaviors born out of obedience to God’s Word. This is why memorization of the word is very important to accelerate Christian growth. What has been memorized is deposited into our subconscious, ready for use.

Of course, just memorizing verses for the sake of memorizing verses without suing and doing what the verse commands us to do can’t change our behavior. The Word of God must permeate all of our behavior. Some people may say “religion is ok, but too much religion might make you a fanatic or “funny in the head”. That is the way the unsaved world. Christians are to think, speak and behave as a Christian from the time they get out of bed in the morning, til they say their prayers before going to bed at night.

In the beginning of both the epistles of James and Jude, in verse 1, they both call themselves “bond-servants” of God and Jesus Christ. In the original Greek translation, “bond-servants_ means “slaves with no rights” except those conferred by their owners. We are OWNED by God when we become Christians.

1 Corinthians 6:19 & 20 - “...do you not know...that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”

We are literally God’s slaves for service and we are not to live just for our own selfish meager lives. The bible teaches that you are a slave, no matter whether you are a Christian or not. A Christian is truly a slave of God. A non-Christian is a double slave; first to sin and the flesh, and secondly, to Satan. Unbelievers are Satan’s captives. (2 Timothy 2:26 - note the use of the word “bond-servant” in verse 24)

We then learn from the bible that when we became Christians, we “died” to sin. (Read all of Romans, Chapter 6) Since we are dead to sin and should not now sin, we are ready for service for whatever God wants us to do. A Christian should be ready to confess immediately any sin that slips past him. A Christian may fail at times, but God commands us to stop the habitual practice of sinning (1 John 3:7-9). We have God’s own divine nature withing us, which is sinless, and as long as we are yielded to this divine nature, we cannot sin. The second we choose to use our old sin nature to live in, we sin.

Because we have two natures, one divine and one sinful, a Christian must constantly keep choosing which nature to give in to. When he sins by making the wrong choice, he must confess that sin and put it away from himself in order to get back into the sinless divine nature. As long as we live, we must choose which nature we are going to use for all our thoughts, words and deeds, and of course, God wants us to choose to live in His divine nature always. When we die, the old sin nature finally is removed from us. We then only have a single, divine nature for all eternity. When unbelievers die, they take their old sin nature to hell with them for all eternity, having died in their sins.

Some Christians ask: “Should we break away from our sin habits gradually or quickly?” The answer is, where you know a sin habit exists, the best method - and quickest - is to break it off, renounce it and turn your back on it COLD TURKEY...and forever!

This section presents the actual commands of Scripture that are to be followed by the Christian to bring about change. Since most of these behavior changing verses are stated in the imperative case in the bible; that is, these commands are to be carried out immediately without question, just as a military order must be carried out; the Christian should see that once we understand the command, we are to carry it out in our lives regardless of cost or consequences. There is no mumbo-jumbo, mystical, hocus-pocus to changing our behavior from the old sinful habits to godly ones. The key to change is simply obedience.

The bible teaches that “obedience is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). The bible also shows that half obedience, or complying only half-way is still disobedience. Being obedient to His commands in the Scriptures also reveals if we are really saved and know Him:

“...we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His Word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him.” (John 2:3-5)

Thus, the true test of whether a Christian is really a Christian is his willingness to carry out the commandments of God. A Christian is supposed to love God. If we are Christians, it is our actions that show we love God by doing His commandments. Loving God is not something sentimental, warm, emotional, fuzzy feeling. It is not saying, “I love Jesus, I love Jesus” over and over again. The bible clearly states that loving God is doing.

“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” (John 5:3)
Over and over we find in the holy Scriptures that actions, not talk, are what God wants from us.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)

When the Christian reads the bible and sees an imperative command, he is to accept that command personally from the Word of God, just as if God Himself had spoken directly to him. This is how Christians are to change their behavior: to believe that God has spoken to them directly out of the bible, and then to do exactly and immediately what God has said! To hesitate, wait or delay is the same as disobedience. God says it now. Do it NOW. You are not to consult your “feelings” to see if it feels all right, nor your friends and relatives, nor whatever or whomever. That is a cop-out. God, Himself has revealed He does not like cowards among His ranks:

“But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in Him.” (Hebrews 10:38)

So for a Christian to change, he must obey, like it or not.

“For you know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 4:2)

Notice in the previous verse that Paul, the Apostle clearly indicates that Christians keep commandments. Notice what Peter the Apostle says by God’s inspiration:

“Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles (unbelievers), so that in the thing in which they slander you as evil doers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God.” (1 Peter 2:12)

“God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

Now it is our turn as Christians to demonstrate our love towards God by obeying His commandments to show that we are truly Christians.