How to Become Christ-Like in 3 Easy Steps
Are you a 97-pound spiritual weakling?
Tired of getting sand kicked in your face by all those Jesus-following do-gooder types?
Want to know how to be, as all the cool kids say, Christ-like?
Well, here's the guide you've been waiting for!!
How to Become Christ-Like
in 3 Easy Steps!
1. Find out what Christ was/is like.
This may seem obvious at first, but this often-overlooked step is quite significant. There are many different people out there who will want to tell you what Christ was like. Be careful. If you choose the wrong Christ, and you then continue with Steps 2 & 3, you will become like that Christ.
2. Don't do anything!!!!
This one's not as much a "step" as a warning. The single most common mistake for those who try to become Christ-like is that they try to become Christ-like. They think that they can become Christ-like by doing things (and not doing other things). Big mistake. You might do some Christ-like things and avoid doing non-Christ-like things. You may be able to keep this up for quite a while, even years. But you will not become Christ-like by doing Christ-like things.
As my good friend Dallas Willard says (and I think Jesus said this, too, but not in so many words), you can't keep the law by trying to keep the law. To succeed in keeping the law, you gotta shoot for something other and something more. You gotta shoot for becoming the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow. An apple tree naturally and easily produces apples because of its inner nature. It can't help it.
So, the question is, how do you turn yourself, your inner nature, into the type of person from whom Christ-likeness naturally flows?
3. Worship
I'm not talking about singing worship songs. I'm not talking about worship prayers. Worship songs and worship prayers are part of it. But I'm talking about worship, in the real, modern-day sense of the term. Like how a teenager worships a certain rock star. Like how a little boy worships his dad. Worship.
It's one of the great spiritual laws that you become like what you worship. The teenager will eventually begin to talk like the rock star he worships, dress like the rock star he worships. I don't think I have to say much about the boy and his dad. It happens naturally. You see it all around you. Look at the things people around you worship and tell me if they don't begin to re-center every aspects of their lives around that object/person.
Having said that, always keep Step #2 in mind. Don't try to worship. It won't work. Step #3 will occur naturally if you keep at Step #1, and don't short-circuit the process at Step #2.
3 steps. Pretty simple, huh? Lot easier than reading Thomas à Kempis.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Yessssssssssss. This is so right. Too bad it took me 12 years of trying to be a good Christian to figure it out. Yick! Its pretty hard though to live your life as yourself and find out there's some gross stuff going on in your heart but boy that sure is where freedom is. Having the guts to let the world see you and then see Christ overcome. Amazing. Good stuff.
Are you missing a major step?
The step being:
Accepting Jesus as one's Lord and Savior and receiving the Holy Spirit.
One can say that accepting Jesus as one's Lord and Savior is an aspect of worship. But couldn't one just as well say that someone can worship Jesus without accepting Him as Lord and Savior? e.g., accepting Him as Lord but not as Savior.
Just a thought to consider.
Thanks Joni. Glad it resonated.
A w/o B...This is a little subtle, and perhaps controvertial, but let me take a stab at it anyway.
Jesus is Lord and Savior, whether one accepts Him as such or not. An alcoholic may not accept that he's an alcoholic, but that doesn't change the fact that he's an alcoholic. That's one of the reasons I'm not particularly fond of the notion of "accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior." And I wouldn't say it's an aspect of worship; I think it's a Step 1 thing, a necessary precursor to worship.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
I have only three problems with your steps.
a) They are not easy - they are impossible. Only God can reveal himself, can liberate us from self-justification, can teach us to worship.
b) They are not easy - they are a free gift. What we cannot do, God has done.
c) They are not easy - they cost our entire lives. The only way to live Jesus' resurrected life is to die with him.
Thanks for this post - I particularly liked how you introduced the concept of worship.