24 Ways to Live Like Jesus

The Foundation for Jesus-Like Character

     I shuffled past all of my friends down the row of chairs. The room was dark, and it was hard to navigate through the maze of feet and chairs. I could feel every person I walked past looking at me, but I had to do this. There was no way out. As I reached the end of the row and stepped out into the aisle, there was my dad. He put his hand on my shoulder, and I told him.

     My dad doubled as my youth pastor when I was in high school. Our youth group had loaded up our church's 15 passenger van and made the 3-hour trek down to St. Loius for a conference. As we sat in the arena and listened to the speaker, I was convicted. I began to realize that the faith that I proclaimed was at odds with the way I lived. I believed in Jesus, but I didn't act like it. It was at this moment in front of all my friends that I knew I needed to tell someone. My dad was the listening ear as I made a commitment to live like Jesus. Now, I just had to figure out what that meant. 

     Faith in Jesus is the foundation for building Jesus-like character in our lives. Without his grace, we cannot live like him. Changing our behavior does not earn his love. Instead, we respond to his great love by becoming more like him through our actions, our motives, our thoughts, and our affections.

Elements of Jesus-Like Character

     At Camp, we want everyone to grow in their faith and share it with others. We developed a helpful tool to easily explain biblical character qualities to our campers. We call it the "Elements of Jesus-Like Character" chart. We've used these 24 character qualities in our summer camp program to teach children what it means to live like Jesus. The chart is designed like the periodic table, because we see that these character qualities are the building blocks of godly character. Each box contains:

• The name of a Character Quality
• An opposing quality to help further understanding
• A short, simple, and memorable definition
• A Scripture reference to see where this character quality is found in the Bible

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     We've seen first hand how kids respond to these character qualities, and how well the definitions stick with them. We're committed to helping you disciple your kids at home, so we want to give you a free, high-resolution download of this poster! Print it out, make it your desktop background, or make it into a wall-hanger in your kids' room.

We pray that God will use this simple chart to help you make disciples at home.

P.S. We'd love to hear how you use this chart at home. Let us know what you do to help you kids live like Jesus by sending us an email at office@cocusa.org.