Let’s Get Down to Basics: An Introduction to Christian Living

64 page, soft cover

$5.00 cost plus $2 postage. (PayPal or checks accepted.)

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Let’s Get Down to Basics—An Introduction to Christian Living is a 64 page book for persons wanting to investigate the Christian faith. It is also good for new Christians who want a good beginning for a life-time commitment to Christ and for mature Christians who want to review some basic teachings of the Christian faith.

The biggest problem with this book is the small print size. I used the small print so I could get all the text into only 64 pages to save money and because I was young and had better eyesight.

 “Basics” is written from the Wesleyan-Arminian perspective as curriculum for a new Christians’ class but also works well as a stand-alone read. Here is an outline of the chapters with short explanations about what each teaches.

Chapter One: Bible Study is Basic, teaches the importance of regular and sustained Bible study for those who want to live a Christ-like life.

Chapter Two: Am I Really a Christian? This chapter helps the new Christian to confirm their relationship with Christ so they can live with assurance so they will not be confused when Satan tries to tempt them to doubt their faith and dessert it.

Chapter Three: I am Stronger than Temptation. Chapter 3 deals with the reality of temptation and helps the new Christian know how to face it victoriously and defeat it any time it rears its ugly head.

Chapter Four: Prayer is My Privilege. Prayer is the greatest privilege we have as the people of God and is our greatest help for normal everyday living. God gave us prayer because he loves us and wants to be constantly available to us. Prayer is his method.

Chapter Five: I Can Discover God’s Will. This chapter introduces and explains the concept that God’s will for us is what is best for us and that when we seek and find God’s will, we also find the best life has to offer.

Chapter Six: What Do You Mean…Stewardship? Giving to God through tithes and offerings is an important part of Christian living, but it is sometimes difficult for the new believer to accept. It is important and this chapter will help you understand why.

Chapter Seven: A Second Step. Salvation is not the end of the Christian life, but the beginning, or first step. Step two is learning to surrender our lives to the leadership of the Holy Spirit and allow him permanent residence in our heart, mind and life. He is the comforter, counselor and guide for whom we are most grateful.

Chapter Eight: I Have a Spiritual Gift? Explains the concept of spiritual gifts, how we receive them as gifts from God and how to develop them for greater effectiveness to bless our own lives and the lives of those in our sphere of influence. We don’t choose them. They are gifts from God, given at his discretion to bless our lives and build his kingdom.

Chapter Nine: Living Holy. God’s plan is for his Spirit to live in us and our call from God is to surrender our lives to him so he can make us holy, like he is. As Christians, we are sacred temples in which God lives when we allow him access or invite him in. This chapter tells in understandable language how to make this happen.

Chapter Ten: I Can Tell Others! Evangelism: sharing our faith with friends and family, is one of the greatest joys of the Christian life, but one that causes the most consternation and feelings of failure. This chapter will help you to understand it and hopefully help you to witness to your faith with greater confidence.

Chapter Eleven: Symbols of My Faith. Ordinances practiced by many Christian groups include baptism, communion and foot-washing. These are symbols of faith—symbolic actions that are living pictures of spiritual realities. You will learn their importance and how to practice them in the church.

Chapter Twelve: My Faith as a Parent. Parenting is at the same time, the most difficult and most rewarding task you will ever attempt. The Christian is privileged to parent under the leadership of God, who is the best parent and is both our parent and our best example for parenting.

Chapter Thirteen: The Last Chapter. This title has a double meaning. The literal last chapter of the book, it deals with the church age, the last chapter in Kingdom history. It gives an amillenial view of last things or the way God plans to finish his earthly program.
   

Three Stages of a Godly Life

by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

The word Israel means "He Struggles with God". It was given to Jacob as a new name that better described his relationship with God and became the name of his descendants.

The stages of a godly life are defined by our struggles, especially those we experi­ence with God. If, in a lifetime we go all the way through, experiencing all three stages, life usually comes to a good ending. If we get stuck in stage one or two—not so much.

Here is my take on the three stages of a Godly life. If you would like a scriptural background for this writing a scripture is given for each stage. 

The Jacob Stage

This stage (Genesis 32:28 and 35:9-11) consists of resisting God, even trying to run from him, and often, after partial surrender, continuing to question God’s call. The norm for this stage is running from God and fighting with God and it continues until we realize it is futile. This stage of Jacob’s life was so consistent God finally changed his name to Israel, meaning “He struggles with God”.

Jacob struggled with God throughout most of his life. We only move out of this stage by genuine conver­sion. But it is possible to be partially converted and remain stuck here for a long, long time. 

The Inner Demon Stage

The inner demon stage of life (Mark 9:14-24) is when there is a desire to know God, but our inner demons continually fight to drag us back to a life without God.

During this stage we struggle to accept God's help, as we overcome inner, innate resistance to God's Lordship. This stage follows genuine conversion as we struggle together with God, trying to learn how to give him genuine Lordship over all of life.

We struggle, but with God's help, perhaps to right past wrongs perpetrated in the days of rebellion, or other challenges from our pre-Christian life in learning to be like Jesus. While trying to serve God faithfully, the struggle here is in learning how to do so. Learning to trust God is not easy and this struggle may be intense.

We move out of this stage through full sanctification, when we totally surrender all of life to God. It is possible to be fully saved, but resist sanctifica­tion and remain stuck here a long time. Serving God this way is hard work as we try to do the Spirit's work instead of depending totally on him to do his work in us. 

The Stephen Stage

Acts 7:54-60 describes the sanctified life of Stephen, the first known martyr among Christ-followers. This is a time of wholeheartedly desiring the Will of God. Stephen had no struggle against God. All his energy worked with God as he struggled to accomplish godly goals and purposes.

In this stage God’s goals are our goals. We work fully with God and all struggles are in the power of God through God’s Holy Spirit. This is when we most experience God's blessing. Serving God this way is pure joy even in difficult times. When we leave this stage the right way, we go to heaven! 

Note these are not really "time", but "sequence" stages. Each stage lasts until we finally understand and are led by God into the next phase. These three stages are normal stages of Christian growth, but the time spent in each can vary greatly from person to person. It is important to understand that salvation through Christ is all that's required for heaven. The purpose of sanctification is to help us live the Christ-like life here on earth. 

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

   

I Believe! Part 3

I believe in the selfishness of sin. Every sin is basically some form of selfishness and every instance of selfishness is sin— the very opposite of righteousness. Selfishness, by its very nature, alienates people from God and from each other, hindering and ultimately destroying the Divine‑human oneness that is the essence of abundant living.

I believe in the wholesomeness of holiness. Holiness is the Divinely intended state of mankind and every unholiness involves some sort of destructive unwholesomeness and defeats God’s perfect Will for us. Holiness does not interfere with life but makes it decisively more enjoyable, more worthwhile and more satisfying. Body, mind, and spirit were created by a holy God for holy living, therefore any unholiness is destructive in any area of life.

I believe in three steps of relinquishment. I believe in salvation, where persons humble themselves before God, to ask forgiveness of past sin, and to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Master of life. I believe in sanctification, where redeemed persons surrender their total being and every extension of themselves to God, requesting the infilling of His Holy Spirit, who cleanses us from the tendency toward selfishness and sets us apart for God’s sacred purposes. I believe the third step is "Becoming". As Christians continually yield themselves to the refining power of the Holy Spirit we become more and more restored to the image of God.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.
   

The Second Step

"...We implore you on Christ's behalf: be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." —II Corinthians 5:20b, 21(NIV)

The Righteousness of God means God's type of righteousness (based on love not legalism); a God-provided righteousness (rather than human self-righteousness); a self-chosen righteousness (God doesn't force it); and a self-imposed righteousness (no one can impose it on anyone else). And, when God's righteousness is in human flesh, except with Jesus, it is always a righteousness in process.

The work Christ did on the cross was an act of God we benefit from when we accept it by faith. However, the work Christ continually does through His Spirit brings us in line with the character of God so that "in him we might become the righteousness of God."

The Holy Spirit helps us attain the Christ-like life in a two-step process some of us call sanctification. We say "I must sanctify myself" (alluding to consecration). Or, we say "I must be sanctified" (alluding to purification). Both are correct uses of the word and statements of what happens in sanctification.

To sanctify is to "consecrate" or set aside for a holy purpose (as in Leviticus 11:44a). In consecration we surrender completely to God for His Holy purposes—living all of life under the Lordship of Christ and under the leadership of His Holy Spirit. To sanctify also means to "purify" or make pure or holy, as in John 17:17 when Jesus prayed for his disciples, saying, "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth."
In this purifying part of Sanctification we depend totally on God to work in our lives and restore us to His image because it is a work we cannot do ourselves. We merely surrender ourselves to him and ask him to do it in us and for us. So the first part of sanctification—consecration, is a work, or surrender, we must do before God's Spirit can fill us, because the power of God's Spirit cannot be released into a life not surrendered to God. The second part of sanctification—purification, is a work God does through his Spirit when he is allowed to fully enter our lives.

This purifying work is also both an action and a process. The action takes place when we crucify our selfish unholy spirit (a work only we can do) and ask God to fill us with His Holy Spirit and give us a new nature (a work only He can do). Most failures in Christian living come when we try to do the Spirit's work—we surrender to God then proceed to reclaim the life we gave Him and try to make it good by our own methods, causing severe discouragement in Christian living. However much we try, we always fail because we can never become good enough by our own efforts. Salvation and the infilling of the Holy Spirit begins the process so God’s Spirit has freedom to do what will require a lifetime to fully accomplish.

The Holy Spirit's work of leading us "into all truth" is part of the sanctifying process. Jesus also said, "Your word is truth" so we can see by this that the Holy Spirit uses Scripture in the sanctifying process, not only teaching us what we should do but helping us do it. You can rest assured God's Spirit never does anything in us or to us without our willing permission, however, those who learn to trust God, know the best way to live is to give Him absolute freedom in all of life.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . .and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

From Where Do Church Groups Come?

Well, somebody starts them. Often not intentionally. They may begin because of doctrinal differences with a person’s current church. John Winebrenner was a Dutch Reformed minister who began having evangelistic revivals to get people saved. When he wouldn’t stop, he was removed from the Dutch Reformed Church and started the Churches of God of North America. About a hundred years later, Daniel Warner, one of their ministers, began to preach about sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit and he was removed from that church and thus began our group who call themselves the Church of God, or the Church of God Reformation Movement. Also know as the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) to differentiate us from dozens of other groups who also use this biblical name.

Or they may be cultural in nature. A particular church group may have doctrines that are very similar to other groups, but the people don’t fit in with those other groups because their culture is so different they just can’t connect.

And there is the possibility that God starts them because he wants to reveal himself through them in a particular way. Sometimes the doctrinal differences aren’t great enough to justify two different groups being separate, but their emphasis in ministry is very different. Could it be that God wants both so he can express himself fully in both those ways? Could it be different church groups are gifted by God in different ways—anointed by God to lead the whole body of Christ in particular ministries? Let me give some examples.

The Mennonite, Amish and Brethren Churches tend to be greatly gifted at “helps” and “service” ministries. They’re good at a lot of things. Strong Bible teachers, great worshippers, etc., but they are known for their ability to help people when they are in need. They have also taught other church groups how to do those things better. Maybe they have the gift of helps.

The Pentecostal movement has not taken hold in all of our churches because many of us just do not accept the concept of a “heavenly language” or “unknown tongue”, but the charismatic worship of the Pentecostals has blessed almost all of Christianity because they have taught us how to worship God more fervently and passionately. Perhaps they are particularly anointed for worship and for teaching us all how to worship God with all our hearts.

The Baptists, such as Rick Warren and many others in many different Baptist groups are greatly gifted at evangelism and have taught the entire body of Christ how to be more effective evangelists. Perhaps they have the gift of evangelism.

There are many more examples, but the point is, just because church groups differ in some ways, doesn’t mean they aren’t our brothers and sisters in the Lord. There is really only one Christian Church and whether we call it the Church of God, Christian Church, Church of Christ, Assembly of God, etc., etc., etc., doesn’t matter. What matters is our relationship with Christ and our correct teaching on those basic Christian doctrines on which we all agree.

I’m Rick Blumenberg,
And that’s My View from Tanner Creek.