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Essay / Analysis of You Were Created to Become Like Christ
Warren opens this section titled OBJECTIVE #3 You Were Created to Become Like Christ with chapter 22: Created to Become Like Christ, teaching that God has created in his image. We are called to make his image and his light shine in the world. We are like God in the sense that we are spiritual, intellectual, and relational beings. All people are born with a moral conscience. Christ was sent to restore our image of God and remind us why and how we were created. Christ is our connection to God. He is our model for how we seek to become more like God. Understanding that we will never reach that destination does not mean that we do not aspire to follow that path. Character development, not personality alteration, is God's ultimate goal. Knowing the character traits of Christ helps us choose correctly. Viewing the fruits of the spirit as the 9 qualities we should all demonstrate to be like Christ helps us make the right choices in life. God develops and ripens these fruits by allowing us to experience temptations where we are faced with either more loving, patient, joy-filled, grace-filled, knowledge, self-control, etc. growth or in the opposite direction. Life is a choice and God uses circumstances to teach us what He wants us to learn. Joy is based on our relationship with God and should not be equated with happiness based on circumstances. The fruits of the spirit grow in us as we draw closer to Christ. Chaos and peace, lies and truth, irritation and patience, are all opposites and signs that we are moving toward or away from our Master's desire for us. Satan is predictable, he wants to trip us up and take advantage of our weaknesses. First, it uses a specific pattern to do this in our lives, and we must be able to recognize it. It finds a desire in us, it suggests with a thought that we should pursue it, it begins in the mind and moves into the heart. Satan will then try to make us doubt God's word and plan for us. Then Satan will lie to us into believing that everything will be okay and try to convince us that there are no real consequences. Finally, temptation leads us to disobedience and locks us into sin. To overcome temptation, you must first refuse to be intimidated. Understanding that we will never outgrow temptation helps us understand that it is a process of becoming strong against Satan. Satan's temptation should actually be taken as a compliment, because it is a sign that Satan hates those who follow Christ, is afraid of those who try to make a difference for Christ, and is indifferent.