Train for Battle
Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
1 Timothy 4:7-8
Basic Training
Now that you have turned from your sins, placed your trust in Jesus alone, and submitted to him as Lord, you have been born again! (John 3:1-8) You are a new creation through your union with Christ. You are his slave-soldier and you’ve been thrust into the spiritual battlefield. Here are 4 things you need to do to grow in your faith and prepare for battle:
1. Read the Bible every day
Psalm 1 tells us that the man who knows and meditates on (thinks about) God’s word will be like a tree planted by the water that yields much fruit. You need to read the Bible every single day. A good rule of thumb is “No Bible, no breakfast; no read, no feed.” Buy a full Bible or, if you’re low on cash, download the YouVersion Bible app (it’s free!) and get started right away. You need to read the entire Bible, but start with the New Testament. Don’t just read it and forget it, but spend time meditating on (or thinking about) what you have read.
The New Living Translation (NLT) is very easy to understand. The NLT Life Application Study Bible is a great choice, full of notes to help you apply what you read. Other good Bible translations are the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the Christian Standard Bible (CSB), and the English Standard Version (ESV).
This discipline is critical! The Bible contains all the information that God has chosen to reveal about himself. We don’t have prophets or apostles today, so everything you need to know about God comes from the Bible. God’s word is infallible; no man is infallible. You can easily be led astray if you don’t know and understand your Bible. Remember how to read by building your BOD:
- Broadly: You need to read the whole Bible systematically, and not just haphazardly read bits and pieces.
- Often: You need to be in the Word every day. Every. Single. Day.
- Deeply: You need to deeply study the Bible in addition to reading broadly. I like to quickly read 1-2 chapters per day (to read the entire Bible broadly) and also slow down and read 1-2 chapters of another book more deliberately to ensure that I’m really understanding. Good suggestions to start deeper study would be the Gospel of John or Ephesians.
Understand that the Bible is a collection of ancient books, and those books have a context. You need to learn how to read your Bible so that you don’t go astray. A good resource for this is How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth . The Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series published by Holman Bible Publishers is also a great resource for understanding your Bible.
2. Talk to God every day
The Bible tells us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). Jesus often spent hours alone in prayer with the Father (Mark 1:35). But what is prayer? The 17th century Baptist minister Benjamin Keach defined prayer this way: Prayer is an offering up of our desires to God, for things agreeable to His will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgement of His mercies.
Jesus showed us a model for how to pray through what is commonly called “The Lord’s Prayer” (Matt 6:5-13). We should offer up our needs and concerns to God, and we should constantly thank him for everything he has given us and done for us. But one of the primary objectives of prayer is to transform ourselves more and more into the likeness of Christ. Through study of Scripture and prayer, we will find our desires becoming the same as God’s desires (Psalm 37:4).
3. Attend church and have fellowship with other Christians
In our modern world, many Christians take a “just me and my Bible” approach to following Jesus, but participation in a local church is a Biblical command (Heb 10:24-25). God’s design is for us to worship him as a people (Eph. 2:19-22). The universal church (that is, all believers in Christ) is the body of Christ, and each of the parts of the body work together to worship Christ and fulfill his great commission (1 Cor 12:12-27, Eph 4:1-16).
The challenge here is finding a good, Biblically-grounded church. Fortunately, there are some resources to help you do that on this site.
You need to get involved in a church and get baptized as soon as possible! Find a good body of believers that can support you and get baptized to obey the Lord’s command and proclaim to the world that you are his.
4. Tell others the good news about Jesus
Our Lord Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples of all the nations (Matt 28:18-20), so you need to do just that! You may not have a lot of sophisticated theological knowledge yet, but you can do what the blind man did in John 9:25 and tell people, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
Make it a priority to learn how to share the Gospel. The best resource for this is the ministry Living Waters, the ministry of Ray Comfort. He teaches Christians how to share the Gospel, sells Gospel tracts for dirt cheap prices, and publishes countless videos showing him doing evangelism. You could do a lot worse than to just share a Living Waters video with somebody and say, “I’d like to get your thoughts on this.”