The obvious response is – what do you want to happen? You accepted Jesus as your Lord. Typically this is accompanied with a great sense of joy and a ‘wanting to do something‘ – however you define ‘something’. This generally means that you really don’t know what you want to do nor how to go about discovering your ‘something’. Not unusual. Perhaps a tad frustrating since there is all that pent up emotion that wants expressing. I do think that what you do about this momentous new you is critically important. I believe there are two critical ‘next’ that you need to do: 1- begin reading scripture to understand who you are. The predominant suggestion is that you start with the New Testament. Most would suggest starting in John but if you’re interest is learning who you now are, then start with Ephesians. 2- begin attending a Bible believing church and fellowship with other like-minded people.
Believe it or not, the first thing you need to do is to start understanding (before acting) who you are (Ephesians gives a terrific picture if you put your name every place that it says in Him, in Christ). If you don’t know what it means to be a new person in Christ, how can you share what happened to you with others and why you made the decision you did? Not trying to rain on your joy and happiness, simply urging you that there is soooo much more that happens to and for you after you are saved/born again. And you need to recognize that you are a baby Christian – which is not a slur or put down. You need to begin to grow and you’ll never outgrow this adventure.
You may need assistance from a more mature Christian. Perhaps I should define (in my world of definitions) ‘mature’… A mature Christian knows beyond the starting point of being saved that this means they have a great deal to discover and that Scripture is a starting point. While this may sound obvious, too often the church wants to share you as much as you want to share but they don’t take the time to assist you in first being grounded before they increase their expectations from you. No blame is being attached, but I do think any new Christian needs time to begin their new walk and who they are… becoming.
There really isn’t any shortcut to growing. Just like in school, we all learn in our own style and time and seem to be quicker with some areas than others. As a kind of ‘jump start’, look at 1Corinthians, especially 12:14-14:40 as a guide and standard. ‘Next’ is always personal. But there should always be a next so that we become all that the Lord has intended for us to be, and so that we can walk in the abundance that is our inheritance.
