A child taken into a new family does not have to earn his place at the table. His standing in that house was settled the day he was brought home. He still has a great deal to learn — where the family eats, who these people are, how the household runs — but nothing he learns over the next twenty years will make him more of a son. All of it will make him more at home.

That is your position after conversion. If you have trusted Christ, the verdict is in and it will not be revisited. God has declared you righteous on the basis of what Christ did, and that declaration is finished. You are still here because God is not finished with you. The word Scripture uses for that ongoing work is sanctification — God slowly making you like His Son across the whole remainder of your life. The verdict does not change. You do.

The New Testament does not leave the next steps to your imagination, and the first of them is baptism. Jesus commanded it Himself in His final commission to the disciples:

Matthew 28:19 (NKJV)

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Baptism does not save you. It is how you say publicly that you have been saved — going down into the water and rising out of it pictures your death with Christ and your resurrection with Him into a new life. It is also the moment you stop being a private believer and become a visible member of Christ's people.

Baptism assumes a church to be baptised into, which is the second step. Nobody in the New Testament is baptised and then left to manage the faith alone. The letters are addressed to congregations, and most of what they command cannot be obeyed by yourself: you cannot forgive one another, carry one another's burdens, or submit to one another in an empty room. The writer of Hebrews states the obligation plainly:

Hebrews 10:24–25 (NKJV)

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

The command is not simply to turn up. It is to watch the people sitting around you and think about what would move them towards love and good works — who has grown cold, who is under strain, who needs reminding of what God has promised in Christ. You cannot do that for people whose names you do not know. So find a faithful congregation, one that preaches the gospel and puts itself under the authority of Scripture, and commit to it.

Once you are in a church, you will find God has arranged it as the place where He feeds His people. He does not grow Christians through spiritual technique or intensity of feeling. He grows them through a few ordinary things He appointed for the purpose: the Word preached, the two ordinances Christ commanded His church to keep — baptism and the Lord's Supper — and prayer. That is why the weekly gathering matters far more than it looks. A sermon you half remember is still the instrument God uses to change you.

Scripture and prayer are in your hands every other day of the week, and they belong there for a reason. The Bible is not a religious book about God. It is God's own address to His people, and the Spirit ordinarily does His work in Christians through it.

Prayer is the other half, and the question every new Christian has about it is whether God is listening. He is — and not because you pray well. You come on someone else's standing:

Hebrews 4:16 (NKJV)

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

That boldness is not confidence in yourself. It belongs to you because Christ is at the Father's side on your behalf, and the door He opened does not shut when your prayers are clumsy, distracted or short. Nor is prayer a way of talking God round. He has settled what He will do, and He has also settled that a great deal of it will come to His people through their asking. Praying is not pressure applied to God's will; it is the appointed way of taking part in it.

A fed Christian is meant to be a working one. But that raises a fair question, and it is worth answering before going further. If your standing with God is settled, and you contributed nothing to settling it, why does it matter what you do with the years that follow?

Go back to the child brought into the house. He does not clear the table to earn his seat at it. His seat was secured before he walked through the door. He clears it because it is his house now, and there is work in a house. That is the logic of Christian obedience from beginning to end. God did not rescue you from judgement and leave it there; He remade you into the kind of person who does good, and the good itself was not left to you to invent. He prepared it in advance and then placed you where it is waiting.

What the work is for, Jesus stated plainly:

Matthew 5:16 (NKJV)

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Two parties gain from a Christian's good works, and neither of them is the Christian. Other people see them and are helped by them, and God receives the credit — which is right, because He is the one who produced them in you. Nothing you do adds to your standing before Him. Christ settled that, and it does not move.

You were not saved into a private arrangement with God but into a body, and a body has work to do. Look at where God has already placed you — your home, your church, your workplace, your street. These are not accidents of biography; they are your assignment. Use your gifts, your time, your money and your table. Speak about Christ, and live in a way that makes the speech credible. Begin with whatever is in front of you, however small it looks. Most Christian service is small and unremarkable work, and it is not forgotten.

That leaves the question most new Christians actually want answered: what does God want me to do with my life? Jesus gives one instruction and does not add to it.

Matthew 6:33 (NKJV)

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

“All these things” are the things He has just been talking about — food, drink, clothing, the ordinary worries that keep people awake. He does not hand out a plan for the next ten years. He promises that if His kingdom is what you are genuinely after, He takes responsibility for what you need along the way. So stop trying to see the whole road before you take the next step on it. Use what is already in your hand.

Lastly, it is important to note that you are not the one who keeps all of this going.

Philippians 1:6 (NKJV)

being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;

Paul is certain this will happen, and his certainty has nothing to do with the Philippians themselves. The One who started the work is the One who finishes it, and Paul gives the completion date: the day Christ returns. That is the guarantee, and it covers everything in between — the cold seasons, the years you would rather not repeat, the failure that convinces you it is over. God finishes what He begins through the ordinary things this chapter has described, and through trials you would not have chosen, and He is not deterred when you are. You did not bring yourself into this house. You will not be the one who keeps yourself in it.