Just like the little man in the cartoon above, I have been searching for a long time as to what life really looks like, so that I can get on with living it to the full! I have realized that all of life seems to fit into six areas.

First of all (& obviously) we have to be born into this world.

Then from childhood onwards our identities are fashioned. We begin to learn consciously and subconsciously who we are as male or female, who we are as a "Kutschker" (in my case), or a "Smith", or whatever our surname is. We learn how to be a part of a family, whether the example is a good one or bad one. This, of course, also plays a huge role in the fashioning of our identities. And in our daily living, we also start to learn how to relate to the wider world out there, all the different people, different values, ideas, and so on. We begin to realize that the world is much bigger than just our own family.

In our teenage years, and especially through the education process, we also start to realize what our talents are, what we are good at, and therefore what type of job we might actually end up doing.

Then, through using the talents we have, we come into leadership. We become skilled, others learn from us, and we also teach others many things. Even being a parent is being a leader, because you are responsible for bringing up children, leading them into how they should be living their lives in the world.

Now whilst the above provides an overview of life, I have found that it also helps us to categorize all the problems we see in our world today:

1. Although we are physically alive, for many people there still seems to be something missing inside of them - they can't seem to find happiness, peace, or joy; it's as if there is a hole in their hearts; people can be at a party and still be lonely.
2. Many people have a low self-esteem, a low view of themselves. So, we often do anything to try and feel good about ourselves. For some, they try cigarettes; others try alcohol, or gambling. Some become sports fanatics, looking to football or soccer. Others try to find their identity in their car, or work, or fashion, etc.
3. Family life is becoming less and less stable. There are so many divorces, broken homes, and children born out of wedlock. Home is often a hell for many. Family bonds have been eroded. Elderly citizens are left alone in their own flats, or shunted away to retirement villages and isolated from their families.
4. The world in which we live is being polluted & trashed. People are being abused instead of respected, there are wars, crimes, rapes, pornography, fights, religious arguments, anarchy, refugees, dog-eat-dog in the business world, etc. People rip each other off, and couldn't care less about anyone else.
5. People's abilities to express their talents are stifled, or they have never been given an opportunity to flourish. And when talents are expressed, it is often for selfish ends.
6. We see dictatorship and oppressive leadership. We see power politics, and people still treated like slaves or pawns in a game of chess. We see leaders who don't really know what they are doing.

This being said, is there any hope? Is there a solution?

In all of my thinking, study, reading, research, & talking with people, I am convinced that although we are born physically, the solution lies in also being born spiritually. We need enlightenment. As Jesus said: "You must be born again" in order to experience life as God always intended it.

When you open up your life to Jesus Christ and become spiritually born, and then allow the spiritual to affect every realm of your existence, life becomes fulfilling, meaningful, and alive!

When the Spirit of God comes to live within you, no longer is there an inner emptiness, but rather a wholeness, peace, and joy beyond understanding.

Your identity is no longer defined by the trashy experiences you have been through in life, but rather by who you are in Christ: you realize that you truly are significant from God's perspective, highly valued, of great worth, and very special in His eyes! You no longer have to prove yourself to anyone!

Whereas your "human family" may be beyond "repair", you are now embraced to be a part of God's family: He becomes your Father, Jesus is not ashamed to call you His brother / sister, and every other believer is now your spiritual "sibling". You are never alone, because God is now with you in a very real way, and He always cares for you!

In your daily life you understand that the spiritual reality is the fundamental reality, much greater than the physical universe. You begin to see the earth as a place to be respected, not raped & trashed. You begin to treat other people with dignity & kindness, showing mercy and exercising forgiveness. Your work becomes something you do for the glory of God and blessing of other people, not a purely selfish and greedy enterprise. You begin to honour those in authority over you, from parents to governments. And beyond religion, you are able to see evidence of the grace of God at work in other people's lives, even if they are not yet following Jesus.

When the Spirit of God comes into you, not only does He equip you with spiritual gifts & talents to bless other people, but often unlocked potential within you is released, just like Spring causes flowers in bud to bloom.

And leadership becomes seen as a responsibility to serve others to bring out their best.

1. Do you believe that God exists? (yes / no)
2. Do you acknowledge the fact that you are a sinner, and realize that you cannot get rid of the guilt of this sin by yourself? (yes / no)
3. Do you believe that God loves you?

· the evidence that God loves you is that He sent Jesus to die on the cross for your sins, and that Jesus rose again from the dead. (yes / no)

4. Do you desire to turn away from your sins, turn back to God, ask Him for forgiveness, and bow to Jesus & make Him the "lord" or boss of your life? (yes / no)

If you have answered "yes" to all these questions, you are ready to be born again! It is appropriate that you now pray a prayer like this:

Dear God,
thankyou that you love me
thankyou that you sent Jesus to die for my sins
I am so sorry for my sins (name them here)
please forgive me
I don't want to sin any more
I believe that Jesus died for me
I believe that Jesus rose from the dead again
I want him to be the Lord of my life
and I want to follow him
Thankyou Lord God
in Jesus name I pray,
Amen.

If you have now prayed the above prayer from your heart, please let me know - I would be overjoyed, and would love to help you further grow in your new-found spiritual life! (Being born again is only the beginning!) If you would like to know more, or would like further help in having your own spiritual birth, please contact me or any other born-again believer. I encourage you also to read the rest of this work, and especially the Bible.

God Bless you!

For those aware of the writings of Francis Schaeffer, you will notice that I have borrowed the title of one of his works, but added a different subtitle. Furthermore, I use the title not in an apologetic sense (ie How should we then live if we keep on abandoning the foundations we have in the Bible?) but in an applicatory sense (How should we then live after we have come to accept the biblical foundations?). I thus consider this paper a virtual manual of applied Christian living, a natural progression from Schaeffer's own book.

This work grew as a result of a number of factors: my trying to grasp the big picture of what it means to live the Christian life in every respect; my wanting to live fully in accordance with what I knew to be true; my need to put into words the forming and fashioning which the Holy Spirit has been doing in my own life; my desire to help others also come into the full experience of new life in Jesus, without getting sidetracked down irrelevant or destructive pathways or lost in the qaugmire of the tonnes of Christian literature in existence. I'm sure you will sense all these aspects in the following pages.

Allow me to say at the outset that I feel hardly any of this material is original. I owe a debt to every single person I have met, whether in person or via media (written, audio, or audio-visual), and to the Holy Spirit, whom I believe has inspired me often. Where there is originality, I believe it comes in the fashion and structure in which the material is presented, and I hope and trust that this structure will be a blessing for many across the world, so that they, too, may simply come to experience the abundant life that Jesus Christ came to bring.

This manual is a living document. The more I mature in Christ, the more it will be refined and added to in depth of insight and content, and I welcome any critique of its current contents. But I trust that for all who read it in its present form it will be a launching pad into ever more fullness of life in Jesus until He returns. I encourage you to consider this document as a ‘scaffolding’ to help you build the life God is calling you to live.

To our great and loving heavenly Father be all the glory, through Jesus Christ His Son.

Peter Kutschker
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
May 2002.

The result of this blessing was to be 'shalom', a peace which permeated every aspect of life, which comes from the reign of righteousness and justice in mercy and humility as a result of God's faithfulness to us (cf Micah 6:6-8).

Jesus came to fulfil this blessing through His inauguration of the Kingdom of God (cf Mark 1:15). Thus, when one becomes part of the Kingdom, "life to the full" becomes one's inheritance, to be enjoyed in foretaste now (cf John 10:10). But how does one become part of this Kingdom, and what does "life" look like?

In a nutshell, "life" is found in becoming a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ, that is, in becoming someone who wants to learn from Him. Translating that into modern terms, it is being on the journey of discovering our true identity and becoming the people who we were always intended to be. A simple ten-pin bowling illustration can show us 'what pins we need to strike out on' in order to have this new life:

Becoming a citizen of the Kingdom basically involves knocking over the first three pins, and life to the full is experienced as the rest fall over, correlating with the two aspects of Jesus' last command in Matthew's Gospel to go and make disciples of all the nations: baptism plus teaching to obey (cf Matthew 28:18-20).

The question remains, however, as to how to knock over the pins. The process to do so is often called Discipleship, which can be represented as follows:

This process may be delineated into the following simple flowchart*:

[* Note that the essential innovation to the whole discipleship process is the division of the Establishing stage into three essential parallel elements (B,C,D). Whilst traditional Christian discipleship has normally included one's new identity in Christ and concepts of community, in a broken, hurting, and individualistic world these two items deserve significant attention.]

Step A, Alpha ® Conversion (Born Again, Commitment to Discipleship)

Step B, Beta ® Wholeness and Freedom through discovery of one's true Identity in Christ

Step C, Gamma = Community Life, Values, Vision, Mission ® Stable Fellowship & Encouragement

Step D, Delta = Daily Living in the World ® Congruent Holistic Lifestyle, "Salt & Light"

Step E, Epsilon = Equipping according to gifts ® Effective person to person "ministry"

Step F, Zeta = "Ministry" training ® Leadership recognised by others

In taking these six steps, a person may expect to truly enter into the life Jesus had in mind for them.

But the steps, when taken, are not necessarily separate and distinct as presented above - they often run into each other. More importantly, the steps A to F (Alpha through Zeta) are actually a process of always (re)visiting the gospel and seeing it applied to more and more of your life and the world, similar to the hermeneutical spiral. I do not believe we can escape the significance of the gospel (cf Romans 1:16,17) in coming to and living out new lives in Christ. Thus before delineating what each step entails, it behoves us to consider what the Gospel is.

The Gospel or Good News which Jesus preached (similar to a military proclamation of victory) was that the Kingdom of God was at hand. That is, the promised reign of God with the Messiah at its head had now made a beach-head in the world, and the result would be unfolding justice and righteousness on the earth, especially toward and for the poor and oppressed. As Jesus said:

[* Note: 'Dead works' in the context of the book of Hebrews mean most probably reliance on the Jewish sacrificial system and circumcision to make/keep one right with God. Thus, the next element of 'faith' would then imply trusting in God's new way, which is through the death of Jesus.]

[** Note: 'Baptisms' (plural) possibly means a putting into true perspective which baptism was now only necessary (a baptism into the name of Jesus) and that other previously practised baptisms (John's baptism of repentance, ceremonial washings for ritual purity) are now out of date, being fulfilled in this new baptism. This seems preferable to it referring to baptism into the name of Jesus plus baptism in the Holy Spirit, because the following term 'laying on of hands' most probably refers to the receiving of the Holy Spirit, unless of course if 'laying on of hands', equalling 'commissioning for leadership/ministry', was actually an expectation within the elementary teachings, which I don't think it was.]

Thus combining all these elements with the presuppositions into which they were preached (that there actually is a good God who is creator of all things who wants us to be in relationship with Him) leads us to what I suggest is an essential formal structure in which we may understand the Gospel:

This structured story of the Gospel can be further transformed into an evangelistic flowchart, across which we can map the six steps Alpha to Zeta, thereby setting the scene for the rest of this document:

Note further, however, how the six steps across the four levels neatly form the shape of the cross:

In fact, all of life can be mapped in such a fashion: birth, family, identity, daily living, talents, leadership. Consider also joining a football team, entering a marriage relationship, becoming part of a workforce, actually anything involving a group of people: you have to become part of the group first (Alpha); you begin to discover and adopt your new 'identity' as part of that group (Beta); you have to learn how things are done around here, or as part of this movement (Gamma); you then have to adjust your daily lifestyle to suit, hopefully being congruent with your new identity and team 'spirit' (Delta); you then develop your talents so that you contribute well as part of your team (Epsilon); and finally, as you become proficient, the mantle of leadership gets placed on you, so that you can lead and set an example for others (Zeta).

And what does the cross represent? DEATH TO SELF. That is, death to covetousness, pride, anything that is an expression of selfishness and rebellion. If we take up our cross and follow Jesus, we then become free to be in relationship with others, because selfishness etc is the killer of relationship.

Thus we can sense that God's ultimate aim for us is to realise:

"I AM ... in relationship"

It is not good for us to be alone (Genesis 2:18).

Let us now begin to unpack each of the six steps so that we, too, can live life to the full!