What To Do Next

Welcome to Next Steps on your Spiritual Journey with Jesus!

And thank you for clicking on this link. Learning about your new faith and how to live it out is called discipleship. A few basic, foundational instructions have been provided on this page to help you in your new faith.  

As a new believer and follower of Jesus as your Lord, it’s important to learn about him. Not only was he a man crucified on a cross in Israel 2,000 years ago, but Jesus is the Son of God creator of the heavens and the earth. While he was on the earth he was actually God in the flesh. No one took his life, he gave it up on his own as a ransom for us so we could be saved and have a new birth, life changing spiritual experience. How amazing is that! Jesus is the bridge that allows us to have this incredible love relationship with God the Father. You can read about this in the Gospel of John in the Bible. This is a good place for you to start reading and learning about Jesus. You will start learning who he is and his example of love for us to follow. 

Also, it’s important to find a good Bible believing church to attend, get involved in, and worship God with other believers. Surrounding yourself with people who have had the same life changing experience with God's love that you have will be a tremendous resource to you. You’ll find others to walk the journey with you and even help you through tough times. If you need help finding a church, click here to let us know where you are and we will help you find one. 

To get started, here are two things to focus on; how to live, and what to believe. 

How to Live

As a follower of Jesus, his primary commandment to us is to love God and to love others. Love is what should set us apart from the chaos and evil around us. One of the best ways to start living a life of love is to be kind and patient with others. Sounds simple, but this really is an incredible truth to being like Jesus. If you think about it, any bad experience we've had with someone was probably because these two virtues were missing. Any great experience we had with a person was because these two virtues were present. Let them define you. Kindness and patience should be foundational to the character of any follower of Jesus. Here’s something cool and hard to believe, as you press in to know Jesus in your conversations with him (prayer) and hearing from him through reading the Bible, he will start developing these character traits in you. It’s called the fruit of the Spirit of God. You will start to become transformed in your character as you seek Jesus. I can’t wait until you experience what I’m talking about. 

Here are some key ways to live out your new faith:

Be Grateful: Develop the practice of starting each day by being grateful. Find reasons to praise God for what you are grateful for throughout the day. Thank him for waking you in the morning to experience life and joy. Being grateful is not only pleasing to God, but it is one of the most powerful things you can do to reduce stress, anxiety and live life with positivity.

Share Jesus with Others: It may be easy for you to start conversation about your new spiritual experience of salvation. Or, it might be difficult for you to start that conversation. Let your kindness and the love of God in you lead the process. When talking with someone, let the love of Jesus be seen in your smile, in your eyes, in the sound of your voice. Be interested in others and what is going on in their lives. Jesus will give you an opportunity to express your joy for them, as well as empathy for them if things are not going well. If they are going through a difficult time, ask if it’s okay if you pray for them. It’s good to let people know that you are a person of faith. If things are going well with them, ask them if it’s okay if you can share what’s new with you. When they say yes, tell them about the new place you're at on your spiritual journey. Let them know that you took a Spiritual Journey Quiz and discovered an amazing spiritual experience. If you’re not sure what to share next, share the Spiritual Journey Quiz with them so they can see where they are on their journey. The more people you can share Jesus with, either by conversation or by sharing the Spiritual Journey Quiz, the more people will be impacted for Jesus by your life. This is our calling, to do God’s will, and to expand the Kingdom of God by sharing Jesus.

Live to "Do Good"

Serving others is a beautiful way to live like Jesus. Serving can be helping serve soup to the homeless in a soup line, to something as simple as giving encouragement. There may be some people you know right now who are are struggling and would be blessed by a call, a card, or a text message letting them know that you’re thinking about them and praying for the Lord’s help and comfort over them. Opportunities to do good are all around us each day. We just need to be sensitive to see what the Lord wants us to see through his eyes, and help those in need.

Learn the foundational doctrines, or belief of your Christian faith: 

As a new believer, it is important to know and hold solid to the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. This will keep you from being misled to following false teaching by cult groups and the many false teachers out there. Any religious leader or church that does not hold to these doctrines is one to stay away from. Below I have provided five foundational Christian doctrines that every believer in Jesus needs to know and believe. These descriptions are brief to help you get a good basic understanding of them: 

Number 1: Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation and eternal life with God the Father

Your new spiritual rebirth experience happened because you believed in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Jesus is the only one who can save us. The Bible teaches us this in Acts 4:12, “Salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” This stands to reason. What other religious leader offered his life for us out of love, and died for us so we could be saved? None but Jesus. What other God loved us so much that he would send his one and only Son to die for us in order for us to have an amazing love relationship with him? None but the God of the Bible. What other religious leader rose from the dead to prove what he said was true. You got it, Jesus. Lastly, Jesus himself said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me." 

Number 2: Salvation by Grace: 

The Bible teaches us in Ephesians 2:8-10 that God saved us by His grace when we believed in Jesus. And we can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things, or works that we have done, so none of us can boast about it. It’s the amazing grace of God that leads us to him. Just as he led you to this Spiritual Journey Quiz as a pathway to find him. Enjoy your salvation as a gift from God. Take time to lean in to God to express your love to him and feel him love you back. 

Number 3: The Bible is the Inerrant Word of God

The next thing to believe is that the entire Bible is true, infallible, and the inspired Word of God. It has been proven accurate through historical record, scientific proofs, and prophesy.  God knows what we need so he provided his wonderful inspired word to us so we can trust it. We can believe what the Bible says through the good times and the tough times of life. II Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.”

Number 4: Jesus is the Incarnate Son of God

The word incarnate means in the flesh. We believe that Jesus Christ has existed as Lord from eternity and came to earth as God in the flesh.  The Gospel of John chapter 1 makes this very clear and says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In verse 14 it says, "And the Word became flesh (incarnate), and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." 

Number 5: The Resurrection of Jesus

Without the belief that Jesus rose from the dead after his crucifixion, there is no eternal life or salvation for any of us. It was by this miraculous event that we can come to Jesus and call on his name to be saved. The Bible teaches us this doctrine and says in I Corinthians 15:12-19, "But tell me this—since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave. But that can’t be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world."

Number 6: The Trinity 

The doctrine of the Trinity helps us understand who God is.  We believe in one Triune God who exists in the persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three-in- one. This doctrine can be challenging to get our heads around, but to help us, God created examples of the Trinity in nature. One example is a condition called the triple point of water. This is when water, at a temperature near zero degrees celsius and at a pressure of 0.006 atm can co-exist as liquid, solid and gas in thermodynamic equilibrium. Three-in-one; H2O.  Scripture teaches us that the Father is God, Jesus is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God. This is consistent with the name God, in the Bible. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim.  Elohim as a plural noun to describe more than one, but the Bible teaches that there is one God. Three-in-one is a very viable explanation. 

Number 7: The Second Coming of Christ

The doctrine of the return of Christ, or the second coming is important for us to believe because it's his promise to us that he is returning for his followers. In Acts 1:2-11 it says that right after Jesus finished talking to his disciples he ascended into heaven in a cloud and while the disciples were straining to see him an angel asked those watching and asked them, “Why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.” Jesus is returning to reveal his lordship to the world, and he teaches us that we should be alert and ready for his return. Part of being ready for his return is using what he has given us to accomplish his will, and grow his kingdom by sharing the good news of God's love to as many as we can.  

There is much more than can be included for each doctrine of faith, but this is a good start on your new journey with Jesus. 

(This page is under construction. More to come)