Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion.
A pastor, E.V. Hill, said it well, when he described a conversion was like "getting to first base in a baseball game. There is still a ways to go until you get home." Or another description is that you start out as a baby. At first you fall down and make mistakes, but gradually you continue to grow ... unless you stop growing. I'm sure this is the experience that is all too common today.
People such as these call themselves Christian, and when asked, say they are. Bishop Williman, United Methodist clergyman, published a book titled "Being Christian When Everybody is a Christian." Or like the response of a man to a young man handing him a Christian tract and asking him "Are you a Christian?" to which he responded "Of course, what do think I am, a heathen?" He surely acted like one.
One of the great needs in the church today is for Christians to become enthusiastic about their Christian faith.
In the third century, Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, wrote his friend Donatus, "It is a bad world, Donatus, in an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people, who have learned a great secret. They have found a joy which is a thousand times better than of the pleasures of this world. They are despised and persecuted, but the masters of their souls. These people are Christians ... and I am one of them."
In the world in which we live, we give most attention to satisfying the appetites of the body and practically none to our souls. Unless the soul has communion with God it becomes weak, discontented, restless. Nothing but God completely satisfies and gives joy, because it was made by God, and for God.
Are you and I able to say with Bishop Cyprian ... "These people are Christian ... and I am one of them?"
