The Basics For Christian Living

Your Basic Nature

You have been created by God as a unique person with a physical living functioning body of fleshly tissue and free willful spiritual powers that will be generated by the desires of your heart, which is the center of your personal passions and your spirit. They will all be managed by the dynamic operation of your mind and all of its connected systems and organs in your body. Your body has been created as either a male or a female organism for the particular physical functions of producing and caring for other human beings. They will each inherit some of your personal physical qualities and learn how to manage their bodies and their various spiritual driving desires as they grow into their fully developed physical and spiritually mature persons. You and your physical parents have each been created in the “image(Genesis 1:26) of God as an individual who has the freedom to make personal choices regarding your daily activities and how you want to manage all of the dynamic factors that are present in your physical-spiritual living existence. These choices will be generated by the thoughts that you generate and strengthen in your mind as your physical-spiritual personality grows to its mature level of functioning abilities. Your physical body will contain the organic qualities for its normal functioning operations unless they have been impaired by some abnormal developments in your physical organs and their systems for coordinated activity. Your heart and mind will also be affected by the sinful selfish attitudes and habits that you each inherited from your original human parents of Adam and Eve when they personally chose to rebel against God by seeking the knowledge of “good” and “evil” for themselves (See Genesis 2:16-17 & 3:1-19) rather than surrendering their personal hearts and minds to the loving and wise guidance and power of the presence of God, their creator, in their daily lives.

Your Basic Situation

God has placed you on the planet of Earth, which He has specially designed as the physical setting for your personal lives as physical-spiritual human beings. The earth with its physical features of air and water and light and heat and land and other living plants and animals and its placement in a solar system has all been particularly designed to enable you to live as physical-spiritual human men and women with their children in God’s physical universe. He created it as the physical platform for the display of His glory. It features a world full of human beings whom He created in His “image” with their personal ability to generale other human beings who could each develop and mature as persons who could demonstrate the wisdom and loving power of His providential care for what is “good” for their physical-spiritual needs and to protect them from any “evil” forces that would capture their hearts and minds and separate them from any positive personal relationship with God for which they were all created.

The cultural environments of this world in which we human beings all live all operate under four realms of authorities that govern our various personal thoughts and the experiences that they produce for each of us in accord with our moment-by-moment personal choices. The first of these realms of authority is basically Social in nature, which includes your parents and other relatives, friends, bosses, teachers, merchants, politicians and civic officials, and lawyers. The second one is basically Financial in nature, which includes your bankers, government officials who manage your currency and its relative value and how you can use it, various financial advisors whom you may seek for their guidance in the business of your daily living, and thousands of merchants who are each trying to get you to buy their products or services. The third realm of cultural authority over your daily life is basically Medical in its nature. It includes your doctors and other medical professionals, producers of medicines and other treatment products for physical and mental good health, and the various insurance companies that offer you various plans to help you to pay for the medical products and services that you choose to use in your daily life. The fourth realm of cultural authority over your daily life is basically Spiritual in nature. It includes all of the various religious priests and pastors and teachers of religious doctrines of belief and the practice of specific rituals of worship and service for the various sources of supernatural wisdom and power that you may seek for help in meeting your personal daily needs or wanted experiences of comfort and pleasure and safety. These include various philosophical gods, like Budda, that various cultures have produced, and Satan and his crew of rebellious angels and demons, and devilish human agents, and the one God who exists and functions as Father, Son, and Spirt who is the creator of everything that exists and the systems under which they all operate.

Your Basic Challenge

Your basic challenge as a living human being in this world of various cultural authorities and personal physical and spiritual forces that motivate and guide you in your personal moment-by-moment choices is to decide how you are going to function for Christian living in this world of various “good” and “evil” forces of influence and authority in your daily life. The only power that you can control in this whole operation is the focus of your thoughts. That focus will determine what you choose to do each moment of your daily life, and that will determine what you experience in the course of your human life in this world and ultimate the place where your personal soul and spirit will spend eternity, either personally separated from God in the fires of Hell or united with God and His family of redeemed human sinners and heaven’s creatures who will together glorify God in the Kingdom of God. No one knows the timeline for their personal life, but its times for decisions come moment by moment. The ultimate quality of those choices will be determined by whom you choose to trust for wise guidance and enabling power in your daily efforts for Christian living in this world. You only have these three choices: the evil guidance of Satan and his agents, the weak flawed guidance of yourself, or the loving and wise guidance of God who created you for a personal relationship with Him. Be very thoughtful whom you trust with your life, because your choices will determine your eternal destiny through sinful selfish habits of self-indulgence or committed habits of trusting belief and obedient actions for Christian living in this world.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.