Keywords for Christian Living

Jeremiah 3:22

Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.

God gives us the answers to living the Christian life in all of His Word. In the book of Jeremiah, we find there are some keywords that, if believers heed them, they could live a victorious Christian life. You don't have to go through your Christian walk wondering if you can be successful because God gives us His Word so that we can be successful if we follow what it says. I find in the book of Jeremiah that there are some keywords, that if followed, we can live the Christian life successfully. Let me share these words with you.

The first keyword is return. The Christian life is a series of backslidings. Let me explain. We grow, and then we slide backward, and then we grow again. The key to growing again is returning once we backslide. You have to understand that every time you sin, you have backslidden from God; therefore, you must return to God each time to be right with God. You will never live a victorious Christian life if you don't learn how to return to God after sin. You cannot allow the embarrassment that sin has caused to cause you not to return to God. The easiest way to return is to return immediately right after you have left God to do your own thing, whether your own thing is sin or doing what you want to do.

The second keyword is a phrase, break up your fallow ground. To live a victorious Christian life, you must always be living a life of faith, and if you live a life of faith, you must break up ground that you have never walked on before. This fallow ground that you must break up is hardened, but there is no ground too hard that a life of faith cannot break up. If you want to live a victorious Christian life, you must have an overcoming mindset that there is nothing too hard that faith living cannot conquer.

The third keyword is amend. To amend something is to revise. In other words, the Christian life is only lived by us revising those areas that we find are not working. I like to put it this way: it is like driving a car. When you drive a car, you make little amendments as you drive, which are little corrections to keep you straight. Your Christian walk is successful by making little changes in those areas where you have found not to be successful. Yes, you will have failures in life, but most of those failures can be corrected by little changes. This is why it is critical that the Christian amends his ways, because if a Christian is not willing to amend the ways where they have failed, they will continue to go down the road toward sin and failure.

The fourth keyword is obey. I don't know which one of these words are the most important, but I lean towards this word obey. If you obey God, there is nothing that life will throw at you that you cannot overcome. Obedience to God starts immediately after a person gets saved. For instance, God commands the believer to be baptized immediately after salvation; if they are unwilling to obey in that area, they cannot grow in the Lord. You see, obedience is the key to Christian growth, and Christian growth is the key to living a victorious Christian life. You cannot pick and choose which area you want to obey because every thing God tells us to do is critical to living the Christian life victoriously. If you will learn to obey God at His first command, you will find the Christian life can be lived victoriously, and it will make life enjoyable and fulfilling.