1. the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) along with
 
2. submission to God's will (which includes your assembling of yourself with the body, using your gift/s for the body, being built up by the body, being led and submitted to the godly leadership of the local church, consistent repentance and confession of sin in your life, sharing your faith, and much, much more) is a mark of a true Christian.
 
The nominal (by name only) Christians appear in every walk of life: 1. cradle Catholics (those that consider themselves Catholic just because their parents were or because they were brought up that way), 2. Protestants of all walks, shapes, and denominations, which again, demonstrate a profession of Christianity, but do not demonstrate true Christianity.
 
A mark of true Christianity in the early apostolic church, which is biblical Christianity, is immediate identification with the life of Christ and the local church through water baptism and remaining attached to the branch--John 15 (do you feel this happened to you when you had your experience at an early age?).  
In Acts 8 ( and also Acts 16 with the Philippian jailor) you will see that the Ethiopian, after Phillip preached to him the gospel, he immediately took the steps of obedience to get baptized. Now, today baptism is delayed sometimes by some due to their lack of commitment to our Lord (which substantiates their lack of conversion and their deficient response to the external call of the gospel). They see it (ie. baptism) as an act of total surrender and then prefer to defer it for later. However, this was not the practice of the early church! They (the early church) followed the example of our Lord when he submitted to baptism as soon as he started His earthly ministry. This step was commensurate with fulfilling all righteousness (Mat 3:13-15).
 
 Not only was baptism done immediately after someone would repent and trust Jesus, but this act placed them in a dangerous position. The early persecution of the church was violent so when someone would join the ranks of "The Way" (as early Christianity was called) they publicly did it and were now among the would-be persecuted. So, it brought shame and scorn by many. This is why Jesus told the would-be disciples to count the cost of discipleship. Of course, salvation is God's work by grace through faith in Christ alone and this means a true conversion is a supernatural work of unprecedented levels and those that truly convert (respond to the effectual call) were not afraid to be ranked among the disciples. This is why so many were willing to be taken into the coliseum of Rome to experience so many atrocities. They understood that to be ashamed of Christ on earth would place them in the category of those that Jesus would not not acknowledge before the Father in heaven.
 
Ask yourself, (when you had your experience way back) did you hear the gospel (Romans 1:15-17;10:17), were you being called (Romans 8:28-30), were you feeling conviction of sin (John 16:8-11), did you repent of your sin (Mat 3:2; Mk 1:15; Acts 2:38, 3:19, 17:30; 26:18), did you place your faith (trust) on Jesus, the Savior and Lord of our soul (John 3:16), and did you remain attached to the branch, by which no true growing can truly occur (John 15). In all this, initial regeneration (Titus 3:5), being born again (John 3:1-11), produces fruit that remains (John 2:19). A true disciple does not abandon the fellowship (John 2:19) nor does he abandon the Word of God (John 8:31). Ask yourself if these things were characteristic of your "not practicing Christianity" that you commented in the beginning? Hopefully, you see the picture. A practicing Christian is one that has been delivered from sin and darkness (Acts 26:18, Col 1:12-14, Romans 6). He is one that does not practice sin (ie. he does not have a continual, habitual pattern of sin, but has a decreasing level of sin, albeit, different levels for each Christain).
 
I tell you all this so that as you continue your journey, you can start conforming your experience with the objective truth of Scripture. This is our lesson for the week since we may not have a session this week due to our dinner. Make sure you look up all the Scriptures cited, it will be very helpful to you as you allow God's Word to transform your thinking and actions. In the event we cannot meet for dinner then we'll follow up on some of these points when we meet again.