Hi, Pilgrim. You’ve set out on a fascinating journey with your commitment to Jesus Christ as a new Believer. That means you are my brother or my sister and I love you and am so proud of you. Welcome to God’s Forever Family! Now you, with your newfound sainthood and shiny halo may be thinking, “I can do anything! Look out, world. Here I come!” Your enthusiasm knows no bounds. You are ready, willing, and amazingly able! (You think!)

May I exhort you, Little Pilgrim: You are a new-born infant–be careful about volunteering for the front line, putting yourself in battle before you have been trained for battle! Some of us have walked many, many miles with the Lord and it isn’t that we are smarter–we have just turned the pages of our Bible more than you have, underlined and memorized a lot of verses, and spent hours with our amazing Father. We have been trained (we never graduate!) and given the challenge of taking care of our younger family members.

If someone were to ask, “What are some of the most important principles of your new walk?” What would you advise a new pilgrim to center on? I believe there are some vital truths you need to know for your welfare. Let me give you five important ones:

1. You are never alone no matter what your circumstances may be:

“Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

“The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed” (Deuteronomy 31:8).

2. You do not face your battles–He does. He lives in you to face life for you. Read that again, slowly. Again! Again!

“You need not fight in this battle; station yourselves, stand and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf” (2 Chronicles 20:17).

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).

You may feel lonely and abandoned. You may feel like you have more than you can bear. No. That is not true. It may seem that He has deserted you, but this is never, never, never true. It may seem that the road ahead is too dark, too steep, and too slick–you can’t make it. You don’t have to “make it.” He never intended that you should TRY to “make it.” He now lives in you and will face these scary, steep, slick, dark places for you! He tells us, “I want you to trust Me in your times of trouble so I can rescue you and you can give Me glory” (Ps. 50:15b).

3. You are loved–more than you could have ever dreamed of being loved.

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness” (Jeremiah 31:3).

“May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high His love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it” (Ephesians 3:17-19 TLB).

4. You are forgiven–totally–of past, present, and future sins. You stand in His presence, CLEAN! Tell yourself that emphatically!

“When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14).

“I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25).

5. You are a new person because of Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection. You died with Him and you were born again with Him–raised to walk as the new creation He has made you.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Conclusion? When you feel like saying, “I am so lonely,” read #1 five times!

When you feel like saying, “I cannot DO this!” Read #2 ten times!

When you feel like saying, “No one cares about me! Nobody loves me.” Read #3 again and again.

When you feel like saying, “How could He love me? I’ve done so many bad things!” Read #4 over and over again!

When you feel like saying, “I’m not any different! Look at me. I’m the same old insecure, frightened, inferior person I’ve always been.” Read #5 again, and again . . ..

These are His basic truths for facing life. Ron Dunn gave this analogy. When a baby is born, he is equipped with everything he needs for facing his new world; he just has to learn to use all of his appendages. You don’t wait until he is ready to walk, take him to the doctor and say, “Screw his legs on–he’s ready to walk.” The Bible tells us that God has given us everything we need for living in our world–we must learn to use what HE has so graciously given us (2 Peter 1:3).

Now, Little Pilgrim, don’t be so audacious as to infer that God is a liar–which we do when we don’t believe what He has said to us and refuse to take those words into our heart, making them our compass. These promises refer to you now. You are a Believer–one who believes. Think about these five truths. Set your mind on them. Thank Him for these truths that He has given you that you might be trained to face your world. With these tucked away in your thinking processes you can courageously declare: “Look out world! Here I come.”