You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. – 2 Peter 3:17-18
If you do not grow and mature as a Christian, you face a very high risk of falling away or being led astray! I know – I did fall away once myself! Please see my testimony at the end of this book. Therefore, if your church (assuming you have found one) offers a “believer 101” or “new believer” class, I recommend you take it and do so as soon as you possibly can!
These classes usually cover many common questions, thoughts, doubts, and concerns that a new believer can have, and this can also help you get involved in other areas (e.g., a Bible study). If your church doesn’t offer one of these classes, there are some available online, or you can purchase workbooks and go through one yourself (although I don’t recommend those except as a last resort if nothing else is available to you).
The goal of doing this is to allow mature Christians to help you get started on the right path and guide you. Please also beware that when you use any online Bible study or workbook, you are subject to the beliefs, opinions, and doctrines of the group that published it, so you must use extreme care and discernment. Newly born-again Christians can be very gullible and easy prey for false teachings – once again, I know, for I was one!
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. – Hosea 4:6
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? – 1 Corinthians 3:1-3
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. – 1 Corinthians 13:11
For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. – Colossians 1:9-10
Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. – 2 Peter 3:14-18
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. – Ephesians 4:11-16
Iron sharpens iron,
So one man sharpens another. – Proverbs 27:17
