You have come to put your trust in Jesus as your Saviour and Lord. You know your sins have been forgiven, and you want to follow Jesus in every part of your life. You are all excited about this, and as you begin to tell your friends what the Lord has done in your life, you meet with mockery, ridicule, scepticism, etc., because according to your friends you are following some stories cooked up by religious fanatics. For example, they tell you that science has shown that all that you are and see are just a random collection of molecules. Some of them tell you that Jesus never died, let alone rose from the dead, and the disciples took Him away from the cross and hid Him somewhere till He recovered. They say they can point out so many errors in the Bible that it is only old people who still believe in it. Some say that all religions are essentially the same, telling people to be good, even though they call God by different names and describe different paths to reach Him. Questions like these rattle you, because they hit at the core of your beliefs and you don't have any valid answers. Some older believers just tell you to stop thinking about such things and only believe!

But you need answers, and there are answers. God has created us in His image, and His ways must make sense for us. Our faith in God must be based on facts, and not on blind assumptions. God who has created us as thinking creatures knows that we need real answers. So here is an attempt to address these basic, core issues. Once you are convinced about these fundamental truths, you know you are on the right path even if there are a million things which you don't understand, because you know you have the major issues clear.

It is not a sin if we don't know everything. Only God is omniscient, knowing all. As creatures with many limitations, we will never have all the answers, otherwise we will be God. But once we have the knowledge of the core matters, and as we experience more of reality as time goes on, they will give us the stability to face new questions. One major mistake people make when they try to 'deconstruct' their faith is to expect to find all the answers, and they conclude they cannot trust in God if something seems to be wrong according to their understanding.

Question: How can we become overcomers??>

We are born into this world which throws us all kinds of challenges. If we passively allow ourselves to be sucked into the system, we will turn out to be one among the billions of people moving along the broad way that ultimately leads to destruction. But then Jesus has come to invite us into a narrow gate that opens to a narrow path. Many people warn us not to enter into that gate, because they say that the path that follows will be miserable, with only a few people in it. But Jesus tells us that at the the end of the path is 'life', real life (Matt.7:13,14). Did you notice Jesus saying that just a few 'find it'? In another place, Jesus said that the life He would give would be an 'abundant' one (Jn.10:10). This is the life of God, spotless and without blemish, and at the same time full of love, joy and peace. This is godliness or the divine nature which Jesus has come to give us, but which very few get to enjoy. This is also 'eternal life', the life that matters in eternity.

Misery likes company. Those who are on the broad way are the ones with the crowds, and they want everyone to join them. In spite of all the fun and games and entertainment they seem to enjoy, they feel the emptiness inside. They wonder about the meaning and purpose of life, and they keep hoping that the next thing they get into will satisfy them! But the search just goes on and on, never ending. They would rather not think ahead to figure where all this will take them and what they are going to be, but they focus on living in the moment. But we can look at them from the outside and see their confusion, uncertainty and lack of purpose when they can only think of the next event.

Even among those who have heard about Jesus, most people think only about Jesus dying on the cross and purchasing forgiveness for their sins. Many of them seem to have got the idea that as long as they are alive here, they will keep on sinning, and they satisfy themselves with forgiveness.

But if we are going on falling into sin, we remain slaves to sin, and then where is the abundant life Jesus offers? Is it possible that we can stop falling into the same sin again and again and move on? It makes sense, doesn't it, to expect that when Jesus saves us, He will actually save us from our slavery to sinning? He does promise that. "For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace" (Rom.6:14). God also tells us that He expects us to stop sinning. "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1Jn.2:1). Of course, God has made provision for our forgiveness if we fall, but that is not where He wants us to be.

What it means practically is that we set our heart and mind in the direction of overcoming sin. When the Holy Spirit came to live inside us, one of the changes that He has brought about is that He has given us a new direction in our heart, away from sin and towards God. But when sometimes we fall because of ignorance or weakness, God's mercy is there to forgive us. We confess our sins to Him, and He tells us He can be trusted to forgive us.

Obviously this is a process, and spiritual growth is not a high jump. As we learn more and more from the Bible we get to know more clearly what God wants us to do and avoid doing. When we want to follow Jesus by doing what He wants, we find desires within us to do something else. This is a battle we will have to fight to overcome our sinful desires and to do the will of God.

These sinful desires we notice are from our fallen nature which we have inherited from Adam and Eve, our most ancient ancestors. They prompt us to please ourselves, and go after money, fame, power, pleasure, etc. These are the different desires that tempt us at different time, and to be overcomers means to learn to overcome our desires and to submit to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us here by showing us the new direction in which we must go, and also by strengthening us against our desires (Php.2:12,13). But the Holy Spirit will not force us to obey Him, and so it is our responsibility to make the right choice every time we are tempted.

When we overcome one temptation, we will find that the next time, the same temptation is not as powerful as it was before. In this way, if we are faithful in consistently overcoming in temptations, our temptations will become weaker, and finally they will not trouble us any more. But then, we don't become sinless in the sense that we can never commit those sins, because any time we become careless again, because we become proud, the temptations come back again and we will fall! Our sinful desires are to be crucified and left to die (Gal.5:24). If we feed these desires now and then, we will only keep them alive. But the golden opportunity that Jesus offers us is that we can overcome sins in more areas of our life and become increasingly more like Jesus in our character.

God's plan is to turn every one of us into overcomers. Look at some of the promises He has made in the Book of Revelation especially for those who overcome!