from Jesus Now by Frank Viola
• Christians will break your heart. The greatest pain you will receive will be at the hands of fellow and professing believers.
• Not everyone who professes Christ knows Him. The fruit of real faith is love—treating all others the same way you want to be treated.
• God will not meet all of your expectations and will sometimes appear not to fulfill His own promises.
• You will experience dry spells where there is no sense of God’s presence. Learn to live by faith, not feelings.
• Build a library and read the best Christian books in print. Don’t waste your time on “pop” Christian books. Go for depth.
• Write your goals down (goals = dreams = prayer requests). And document when a prayer or goal is answered or fulfilled.
• Never judge other Christians unless you’ve walked in their shoes. Always think the best of others (Matt. 7:12).
• Choose a mentor, but never choose one who is insecure, speaks negatively about others, or has an inflated ego.
• Some of the things you struggle with now you will struggle with when you are old. Resist condemnation (Rom. 8:1).
• Many of the answers you have now will prove inadequate later in life. Always be a student and a child in the kingdom.
• Never bluff an answer to someone’s biblical or theological question if you don’t know the answer. Learn to say, “I don’t know.”
• Discover who you are in Christ and learn what it means to live by His indwelling life.