Life presents an unending flow of situations which provide you opportunities to establish, develop, reinforce, or degrade your character. How you respond to life’s endless stream of situational stimuli will show who you are and determine who you become. Over time, your decisions will always close or extend the gap between you and God.
In every moment, you are choosing what your character will become through the decisions you make: what you do, why you do it, and how you feel about it. Can you make your very next decision exactly as Jesus would in your place? If not, can you make your next decision exactly as you sincerely believe Jesus would in your place? If not, can you at least indicate how you sincerely believe Jesus would make that decision? If you don’t know, could you find out?
The purpose of life is to provide all with the opportunity to make their character more like God’s through learning more about what he is like and living as he would.8 To know someone’s character perfectly is to be able to perfectly predict how they will act, why, and how they feel about it in any situation. You don’t know enough about God to accurately anticipate how he would act, why, and how he would feel in any situation. However, you do have an idea of these things and the ability to seek to learn more to increase the breadth, depth, and accuracy of that idea. As you make decisions as you believe Jesus would in your place, you will learn more about how he would actually live in your place.