Five Christian Goals: Introduction – Part 1

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(Matthew 16:24) – Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. (NKJV; emphasis mine)

We recently spent a couple of Sunday school hours overviewing five primary Christian goals as it pertains to how we should live life. I am going to take the five points we reviewed and do a 16 part series on them because each point is worthy of a lesson by itself. Five points becomes 16 lessons because each point has three parts – “head, heart, hands” – plus today’s introduction.

“Head, heart, hands” is the process of going from knowledge (head), to conviction (heart) to action (hands). While my lessons are going to loosely follow that outline that was given to me, the commentary and teaching will be my own, including changing the titles of the original main points. I’m not sure where the original points came from, so I’m unable to give that credit here. Here are the five points in my own words:

1. Living Like Christ
2. Proclaiming Christ
3. Serving Like Christ
4. Worshipping Christ
5. Fellowship in Christ

We will take each of those main points, discover what the Bible teaches (head), see how it applies to our life (heart), and then learn how to make it a real part of our daily walk (hands).

Who Cares? So What?

It’s always valid to ask those questions. If you don’t understand why something is important to learn, then the commitment to learning it, and teaching others, will not be there.

If your kids, family or friends ask you, “how is a Christian supposed to live”?… could you answer? How about these: “what are the main purposes of being a Christian?”; “what is the goal of being a Christian?”; “what are the most important things about living the Christian life”?; “can you teach me the basics of living the Christian life?”

We take these types of questions and points for granted until someone asks us. Go ahead and do your own informal test/survey. Ask your Christian friends these questions. Pop the question on your Sunday school class. Chances are, you’ll be met primarily with blank stares. We should care about being able to adequately and confidently answer basic questions like “can you tell me how to live like a Christian”? or “what are the really important things about the Christian life?”

It is my experience (highly unscientific) that about 1 in 100 Christians can adequately and confidently communicate the basics of Christian living to another person. We take them to church, we give them books, we point them to our Pastor or preacher, but rarely do you find the Christian who can confidently say “here are some primary goals of the Christian life”. It’s all about discipleship… we SHOULD be able to teach and lead others into a fruitful Christian walk.

Note: it’s not that THESE five goals are some sort of DOCTRINE, nor can this list be found in Scripture as a list… it’s a just good, fundamental place to begin. Other things could easily be added to this… but this is a great basic list to know how to communicate to those you are discipling. (you are disciplining someone aren’t you?)

We spend great amounts of time learning to coach sports, learning how to run businesses, how to be personally successful… we should invest equal or greater time in learning the basics of Christian living. That’s what this series is all about. It will be a lengthy series, but I hope you’ll hang in there with me.

Lord God, help us to learn the important goals of Christian living and be able to teach them to others, as well as live them. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.